

-^^^-^^ 



'.j^ ly H D^rJiiKSu-ps rj3a''clay S* N . 



■"X -' 



LIFE OF WASHINGTON 



BY / ot^*'-^ 

VIRGINIA F. TOWNSEND 



ILLUSTRATED 




NEW YORK 
WORTHINGTON CO., 747 BROADWAY 

1887 






Copyright, 1887 
By VIRGINIA F. TOWNSEND 



Press of J. J. Little S: Co. 
Astor Place, New York. 



To THE MILLIONS WHO SIT AROUND THE FIRESIDES OF 
AMERICA, WHOSE FREEDOM HE FOUGHT FOR, AND WHOSE 
LIBERTIES HE WON, THIS LIFE OF GEORGE WASHINGTON IS 
DEDICATED, BY ITS AUTHOR. 



PREFACE. 



So many lives of George Washington have 
already been written that a new one perhaps re- 
quires some justification. 

The character and deeds of the man who stands 
in the foreground of American history may be 
regarded from many sides. 

The brief biography in these pages must, at 
the beginning, claim to be a woman's way of 
looking at George Washington. 

In going over the familiar ground, the author 
believes she has entered some by-paths where she 
has gained a new view of the figure which stands 
in solitary majesty in the heart and imagination 
of the American people. 

The author has also endeavored, while adhering 
strictly to the truths of history, to set the great 
scenes and crises in the career of Washington in 



6 Preface, 

a picturesque and dramatic form before her 
readers. 

The limits of this sketch do not, of course, 
admit of the broad Unes and the grouping of 
stately figures with which other writers have 
filled their larger historic canvases. 

To George Washington, when he reached the 
splendor of his power and greatness, his Virginia 
farm and his Mount Vernon fireside were the 
dearest objects of his ambitions and affections. 

The author hopes that the real man, not only 
the great general, the wise statesman, but he who 
moved about that Virginia farm and sat at that 
Mount Vernon fireside, may live and breathe in 
these pages. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. PAGE 

Sixteen Years 13 

CHAPTER II. 
From Boyhood to Manhood 34 

CHAPTER III. 
The Young Hope of Virginia 48 

CHAPTER IV. 
Winning His Spurs 63 

CHAPTER V. 
Braddock's Battle-field 75 

CHAPTER VI. 

The Knight Sans Peur et Sans Reproche 88 

CHAPTER VII. 
Lover and Soldier 103 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Marriage and Mount Vernon iii 

CHAPTER IX. 
England and America 135 



8 Contents, 

CHAPTER X. PAGB 

Gathering of the Storm 159 

CHAPTER XI. 
The American Revolution 175 

CHAPTER XH. 
The Commander-in-Chief 187 

CHAPTER XIH. 
The Peace 2o5 

CHAPTER XIV. 
The First President of the United States 217 

CHAPTER XV. 

The Grand, Simple Life : The Sun Turning West- ' 
ward 237 

CHAPTER XVI. 
To THE End — December 17, 1799 251 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Portrait Frontispiece. 

FACING PAGE 

^ Cave Castle. The Residence of the Washing- 
tons IN Yorkshire, England i6 

^ The Home of George Washington's Boyhood 22 

^Washington. A Virginia Colonel at Forty 32 

' Washington's Telescope 38 

^ Lafayette — The Friend of America. This was 

Painted by C. W. Peale in 1778 48 

^ Washington's First Headquarters on Wills' 

Creek 64 

' vWashington and Lafayette 80 

/[Bible Used at the Inauguration of Washington. 80 

' Washington Crossing the Delaware 96 

^ (jThe Boston Medal 112 

"* (The Vernon Medal 112 

Washington's Headquarters Near Newburgh 128 

' Battle of Princeton 136 

' Mrs. Washington at the Time of Her Marriage. 152 



lo List of Illustrations, 

J FACING PAGE 

Washington's English Coach i6o 

^ White House 176 

Mount Vernon 192 

Washington's Gold Watch 216 

The Sword and the Staff 216 

Washington's Last Watch Seal 216 

Washington's Tomb 232 

, Washington's Monument, in Union Square, New- 
York 248 



LIFE OF 
GEORGE WASHINGTON. 



CHAPTER I. 



SIXTEEN YEARS. 



In an old family Bible — always a price- 
less heirloom in a Virg-inia household — 
many curious eyes have read this entry : 

^ ** George Washington, son to Augustine, 
and Mary his wife, was born ye eleventh 
day of February 173^, about ten in the 
morning, and was baptized the 3d of 

VApril following." 

In an ancient, one-story homestead, 
where the steep roof sloped down into 
low, overhanging eaves, and where 



14 Life of George Washington, 

either end, according to the fashion of 
the time, was flanked by an immense 
chimney, George Washington first saw 
the Hght on the winter morning of Feb- 
ruary 22d (N. S.), 1732. 

History has preserved for us the 
wide rejoicings, the gay pageants, the 
grand ceremonials, which greeted a good 
many births in the last century. The 
one which lies recorded in such quaint 
terms in the old family Bible must have 
made a very slight ripple on the surface 
of human affairs. There was no blazing 
of bonfires, no ringing of bells, no beat- 
ing of drums, because a boy was born 
that day in the simple homestead on 
Bridge's Creek. 

Mary, only a little while ago the 
beautiful belle of the Northern Neck, 
with '' hair like flax, and cheeks like 



Sixteen Years, 1 5 

Mav-blossoms," must have looked with 
a young mother's pride and joy into 
the eves of her first-born ; the father 
must have welcomed the goodly son of 
his second marriage, and the two boys 
of the first one, and the friends and 
neighbors of the quiet old colonial set- 
tlement, must have brought o^reetinofs 
and congratulations in the kindly fash- 
ion of a century and a half ago. 

The child, whose beorinninofs were so 
simple, came of a stanch old English 
race. Its roots could easily be traced 
up to the century that succeeded the 
Norman Conquest. The heads of the 
family held estates and bore their part 
bravely in the fierce wars and the gay 
pageants of the time. Their names oc- 
cur, in more or less varying forms, in 
old, yellow, time-worn records. One 



1 6 Life of George Washingto7i. 

who searches will find that those early 
Washingtons always made an honorable 
figure, and always played their part 
manfiilly in their time and place. 

Loyalty seems to have been in their 
blood, for they held to the failing fort- 
unes of the Stuarts, and one of them 
lost his life under the gallant, headlong 
Prince Rupert at the storming, of Bris- 
tol. Then hard times befell. It is 
likely the Washingtons, like many 
other brave souls, had to pay dearly 
for their adhesion to that bad, lost 
cause. During the Protectorate two of 
the brothers emigrated to America, and 
settled themselves in the wild, beautiful 
country between the Rappahannock and 
Potomac rivers. Here the strong qual- 
ities of the race would be sure to make 
their mark. One of these English 




cave castle. the residence of the washingtons in york- 
shire, england. from this home two brothers, 
cavaliers, emigrated to america during 
\^romwell's reign. 



Sixteen Years. 1 7 

brothers settled on Bridge's Creek, mar- 
ried, owned a large estate, became a 
magistrate, and one of the leading men 
of the colony. His descendants inher- 
ited and improved his estate, of which 
the old homestead, where his great- 
grandson, George Washington, was 
born, formed a part. 

Not long after his birth the family 
changed their residence for one on the 
Rappahannock. The pleasant meadow 
which surrounded the house and 
stretched down to the river must have 
been among the earliest things in 
George Washington's memory. On 
this meadow, bordered by the browm, 
glancing river, he spent many days of 
his free, happy boyhood. One fancies 
him, always tall and stalwart for his 
years, running and shouting amid the 



1 8 Life of George Washington. 

tall green grass, chasing the butterflies 
through the red clover and wild daisies ; 
watching with grave, blue, childish eyes 
the swift current of the Rappahannock ; 
setting his toy canoes afloat on the 
stream ; laying snares for squirrels and 
rabbits — a busy, swift-footed, keen-eyed 
boy, gaining in this free, wide, out-door 
life those tastes and habits which were 
to become the passion of his later 
years. 

The material for a biography is, at 
this early period, rather scanty. The 
story of the hatchet and the cherry sap- 
ling, whether true or not, is singularly 
characteristic. It shows the strone im- 
pression which the sensitive conscience 
of the child must have made on those 
around him. Nobody would ever have 
thought of relating such a story in con- 



Sixteen Years, 19 

nection with the boyhood of Napoleon 
Bonaparte. 

George Washington had a singularly 
happy childhood in that old Westmore- 
land home, where the wide meadow 
sloped down to the river. He had 
been born into a good place. Those 
first years struck their roots into a 
simple, wholesome, vigorous life. We 
can imagine him, a shy, grave, slender- 
limbed boy, going to the '' old field 
schoolhouse " where he learned to read 
and write, and acquired some rudiment- 
ary arithmetic. He had, too, the ines- 
timable blessing of a sensible, high- 
minded mother. There was a good 
deal of the old Roman matron in the 
character of the Virginia planter's 
wife. Her oldest son inherited from 
her that dignity of presence and man- 



20 Lif^ of George Washington, 

ner which afterward made so profound 
an impression on all who came in con- 
tact with him. He was brought up in 
an atmosphere of great reserve and 
formality, and his early training left its 
mark on him throughout his life. Mrs. 
Washino^ton exacted a deference from 
her sons in curious contrast with the 
freer habits of our own times. It is 
difficult to fancy that group of stalwart 
boys, with their young sister, ever sport- 
ing in wild merriment about the stately 
mother. They must have been early 
trained to habits of prompt, implicit 
obedience. Even after he had reached 
manhood it was Washino^ton's habit to 
address his mother, in his letters, as 
'' Honored Madam," an example which 
You nor America has not thouo^ht it wase 
to follow. 




THE HOME OF GEORGE WASHINGTON'S BOYHOOD. 



Sixteen Years. 2 1 

Yet, with all her hlg^h notions of 
maternal authority, Mrs. Washington 
does not appear to have been a severe 
parent. It is doubtful whether there 
was a happier home on all the Western 
Continent in the second quarter of the 
last century than that low, steep-roofed 
Westmoreland cottage. 

George Washington's early advan- 
taofes were mea^-er enouo^h when com- 
pared with those of the present genera- 
tion. But he had a home-trainino^ of 
more value than many books. His out- 
door life, too, was admirably adapted to 
develop his health and the singularly 
keen perceptions with which nature had 
endowed him. Almost from infancy he 
showed a passionate love of all athletic 
sports, and a little later led his com- 
rades in all those feats which taxed 



2 2 Life of George Washington, 

their young strength and agility. Boys 
are keen judges of character. They 
were not lone In learn In q- there was 
one on whose word and Innate sense of 
justice they could always rely. It be- 
came the custom to refer all their child- 
ish disputes to him for final settlement. 
We can Imagine the shy, silent boy, so 
brave and alert among his comrades, sit- 
ting In the lonof winter evenlno-s in a cor- 
ner of the great-mouthed chimney, and, 
while the hugfe blazinof Ioq^s filled the low- 
celled room with ruddy light, drinking in 
the tales of his elders; stirring tales of 
wild beasts In the woods and Indian wars 
on the border. All his young blood must 
have been fired as he listened ; but nobody 
dreamed what a role the silent boy In the 
corner was to take a little later in scenes 
like those whose recital charmed away the 



Sixteen Years, 23 

long winter evenings In the old colonial 
farmhouses. 

George was only seven years old when 
his half-brother Lawrence returned from 
England, where he had been sent, as the 
eldest son, to complete his education. 
This was a great event In the boy's life. 
Lawrence, trained and accomplished by 
foreign travel, study, and polished soci- 
ety, was fourteen years the senior of his 
brother. The youth and the boy became 
tenderly attached to each other. George 
had that Immense admiration for Law- 
rence which a young, undeveloped boy 
often feels for an elder brother familiar 
with the world. He made the young 
Oxford graduate his model In all things. 
Lawrence was worthy of this affection and 
trust. He had the strong character, the 
high virtues, of his race. His example 



24 Life of George Washingtoit. 

must have been of Infinite benefit to his 
young brother. 

Indeed, the more one regards the early 
life of George Washington, the more one 
perceives how admirably It was adapted 
to the development and training of the 
man for the great part he was to play on 
the stacre of the world. 

That early home was not shadowed and 
chilled, like so many young lives of great 
men, by struggles with poverty and lack 
of sympathy. The boy who was grow- 
ing up In the quiet colonial neighborhood, 
with the vast, solemn wildernesses of the 
New World all about him, was, no doubt, 
far happier than any prince at that day 
in the old one. 

It Is probable that the boy's first real 
acquaintance with grief was occasioned 
by the death of his father. At eleven 



Sixteen Years. 2 5 

he could understand somethlnof of what 
that meant for hlmseh", his widowed 
mother, his three young brothers and 
their sister. Happily, Lawrence was at 
home at this sad time. The young 
captain had long been absent with his 
regiment in the West Indies, under Ad- 
miral Vernon. His marriage with Anne 
Fairfax, which would Insure his settling 
down on his share of the estate, had 
been on the eve of taking place, and 
was only delayed by the death of his 
father. 

The widow and her young family 
were left with ample means. Her hus- 
band showed his estimation of her char- 
acter by appointing her guardian of 
their children's property. She proved 
herself equal to that high trust, and to 
the heavy and varied responsibilities 



26 Life of George Washington, 

which her husband's loss devolved on 
her. 

Lawrence married the eldest daughter 
of the Fairfaxes and settled at his own 
home, which he named Mount Vernon, 
in remembrance of his old commander. 
The intimacy which now sprang up be- 
tween George and the family of his sister- 
in-law was of great importance to the boy 
at this formative period of his life. The 
Fairfaxes were among the most influen- 
tial people of the province. Polished and 
cultivated, with the habits and traditions 
they had brought from their ancient 
country-seat in Yorkshire, they repre- 
sented much that was best and worthiest 
in the old colonial society. Their house 
at Belvoir, a few miles below Mount 
Vernon, was full of gay young people 
of both sexes, and it must have resem- 



Si xt 6671 Y6ars. 2 7 

bled in its leadino^ features an Eno^lish 
country-house of the higher class, though 
this, probably, had something of the 
larger freedom and more robust life of 
the New World. Here came, to be al- 
most one of the household in a little 
while, the blue-eyed, grave-faced, rather 
overgrown boy from the Rappahannock, 
keenly observant of all that was going 
on about him ; a little shy, with a con- 
sciousness of awkward movements and 
rustic manners among all these well- 
bred people, and showing his best in 
the out-door feats and games, where he 
was sure to be the leader. 

There seems to have been no thought 
on the part of the boy's relatives of 
sendine him abroad and o^ivino^ him the 
advantages which his elder brother had 
enjoyed. Perhaps the early tastes he 



28 Life of George Washington, 

manifested had somediing to ^o with 
this. They were of the most practical 
kind, and the whole aim oi his education 
was merely "to equip him for the ordi- 
nary business of life." He went to live 
a while with Augustine, his younger half- 
brother, and in the neighborhood was a 
school, to which he was sent, and which 
was at least an improvement o\\ the old 
one. 

So, in studies at school, and frequent 
visits at Mount \'ernon and Belvoir, the 
years went by, and the grave, shy, 
silent boy reached his fourteenth birth- 
day. 

Then a longing to enter the navy 
took possession oi him. The mother's 
disapproval was the only thing that 
stood in the way. This was at last 
overcome. Airs. Washington was pre- 



Sixteen Years. 29 

vailed on to give a reluctant consent. 
The midshipman's warrant was procured. 
The trunk was aboard the ship. Then 
the mother's heart failed her. 

Thoughts of her boy's youth, of the 
long separation between them, of the 
hardships and perils before him, con- 
quered the resolute woman. She again 
earnestly opposed his departure. That 
of course, ended the matter. George 
swallowed his disappointment — it must 
have been a bitter one at that age — and 
returned to school, where he continued 
for the next few years. He showed 
great delight in the study and practice 
of land-surveys. Whatever he did was 
done thoroughly. There was none of 
the haste and carelessness of youth in 
his work. His field-books, where he 
made his diagrams, and entered his 



30 Life of Geoi^ge Washington, 

measurements and boundaries, were mod- 
els In all respects. Order, promptness, 
exactness, were a part of his being. 

The schooldays were pleasantly va- 
ried with frequent visits at Mount Ver- 
non and Belvoir. At each of these 
places he enjoyed a refined and grace- 
ful family life, at a period when tastes 
are formed and impressions are most 
vivid. 

One cannot restrain a smile over por- 
tions of that minute code of manners 
and morals. Yet what a true, earnest 
young soul shines through all the prim 
rules, the painstaking details ! How 
resolute the boy was to do his best ! 
How careful in all that concerned his 
morals and his manners ! 

He had been born in the Georofian 
age. He bore the name of its second 



Sixteen Years, 31 

monarch. There was one subject which 
must have held a large place in the 
horizon of George Washington's boy- 
hood. Little as we realize it now, it 
was the burning question of three dec- 
ades with Great Britain and her prov- 
inces. On its decision hung the dearest 
interests of the colonies, their religion, 
their laws, their future. Would the 
long struggle between the House of 
Brunswick and the House of Stuart end 
at last for the German Elector or the 
Papist Pretender ? Tremendous issues 
hung on the settlement of a question 
which every man must have felt was 
doubtful, until after the Battle of Cullo- 
den. This took place the summer that 
George Washington was thirteen years 
old. With what eagfer interest he must 
have drunk in the story of that battle, 



32 Life of George Washington. 

when the first vessel brought the news 
across the summer seas ! How his 
whole soul must have kindled with joy 
at tidings of the victory ! How little 
that young boy dreamed then that he 
— the son of the Westmoreland planter 
— was fated, a few years later, to deal 
the House of Brunswick its heaviest 
blow ! 

'Lord Fairfax, the tall, gaunt, eccen- 
tric old English nobleman, who, in his 
youth, had figured at courts and en- 
joyed every advantage of high birth 
and breeding, was at Belvoir. The old 
nobleman had a passion for hunting. 
In the midst of his horses and hounds 
he was always chasing the game to 
cover in the Virginia woods, with all 
the fiery eagerness with which, in his 
youth, he had followed the trail over 




WASHINGTON. A VIRGINIA COLOMiL AT FORTY. 



Sixteen Yeurs, 33 

the Yorkshire moors. He found in the 
young schoolboy a companion after his 
own heart, as eager for the hounds, as 
bold in the saddle, as skilled in the 
chase. The woods afforded splendid sport. 
The two were always out hunting to- 
gether. The old nobleman, with his 
Oxford training, his memories of 
courts, his stories of the Blues — the 
regiment of which he had been a mem- 
ber — his keen knowledge of men, 
learned to like and trust the boy who 
came on occasional visits to Belvoir. 

3 



CHAPTER II. 

FROM BOYHOOD TO MANHOOD. 

At sixteen, George Washington no 
longer seemed a boy. His figure had 
shot up slender and tall, while his out- 
door life, his surveys, and his sports 
had laid the foundations of his splendid 
health. It is easy to imagine him at 
this period, with the down of early 
manhood upon his chin, with his clear, 
gray-blue, honest eyes, and his grave, 
noble, strongly marked features. I Im- 
agine him, too, a little formal in bearing 
and speech, not altogether self-possessed 
in a drawing-room, or likely to put 
young girls at their ease. He had no 
gift of small talk — none of the grace 



From Boyhood to Manhood. 35 

and lightness of the mere carpet knight. 
The great moral qualities which were 
alike to impress friend and foe, the dig- 
nity of presence and bearing which, in 
later years, so often overawed those 
with whom he was brought into social 
relations, could, at this time, only have 
been dimly discerned by the most acute 
observer. In the proudest dream of his 
youth, too, that boy of sixteen had no 
prescience of his future greatness. 

He probably, at this period, seemed 
to ordinary people a grave, quiet, un- 
assuming youth, with nothing brilliant or 
striking on the surface. Those who 
knew him best must have felt that his 
strong love of justice, his keen sense of 
honor, and his perfect integrity were a 
fairer promise for his future than the 
most captivating graces of mind or 



36 Life of George Washington. 

manner. They knew, too, what a fiery- 
temper lurked under the modest bear- 
ing- ; and what wrath would flame out 
at any story of wrong or meanness or 
treachery. 

Lord Fairfax gave a remarkable proof 
of his appreciation of young Washing- 
ton at this juncture. The old noble- 
man held vast tracts of land from the 
Crown. They lay, largely unexplored, 
beyond the Blue Ridge. It must have 
astonished everybody when he suddenly 
proposed that the boy with whom he 
had hunted so many days in the Vir- 
ginia woods should set out on a sur- 
vey of these lands. The offer was 
eagerly accepted. From that hour we 
hear no more of George Washington's 
schooldays. 

He set out at once, accompanied by 



From Boyhood to Manhood. 7)7 

one of the young Fairfaxes. They went 
through a pass in the Blue Ridge and 
entered the beautiful Valley of the Shen- 
andoah. They camped in the woods ; 
they lived on game. The hardy, ad- 
venturous life suited Washington admi- 
rably. He surveyed wide tracts among 
the mountains and about the South Po- 
tomac ; he was absent some weeks ; his 
work, on his return, gave the amplest 
satisfaction to Lord Fairfax. 

The old nobleman's influence probably 
secured young Washington's appoint- 
ment soon afterward as public surveyor. 
He spent the next three years in this 
congenial work. He lived much of the 
time in the wildernesses and in the 
wild, varied, unexplored country beyond 
the Blue Ridge. It was a splendid 
training for him. What a mercy it was 



38 Life of George Washmgton. 

that nobody thought of sending him at 
this period to Oxford, to waste his stal- 
wart youth in class-recitations and dim 
college libraries ! The years that 
awaited him held tasks heavier than 
had ever fallen to human lot; and for 
these he needed the trained eye, that 
took in everything with a lightning 
glance ; he needed the iron nerves, that 
no hail of bullets, no war-whoop of sav- 
ages, could shake; and he needed a 
frame seasoned by sun and tempest, by 
exposure and hardship, until it seemed 
to have the fiber of some mighty oak 
of the forest. 

With his swift temper and his strong 
will, George Washington was not likely 
to be always a saint in those days. But 
so far as we know, he was singularly free 
from the follies and vices of youth. He 




Washington's telescope. 



From Boyhood to Manhood, 39 

led a happy, busy life at this period. The 
rough experiences of the wildernesses 
were alternated with visits to Belvoir, 
where the refining social and educa- 
tional Influences of his boyhood could 
still maintain their ascendency. He re- 
turned here to follow the hounds once 
more with Lord Fairfax, to read In the 
old nobleman's library the Spectator and 
English history, and to visit his favorite 
brother at Mount Vernon. During these 
days he must have grown familiar with 
the lives of the greatest of England's 
patriots and statesmen. His soul must 
have been fired with the histories of 
Eliot and Pym, of Hampden and Milton. 
The young Westmoreland surveyor was 
yet to prove that he too belonged to 
that mighty breed of heroes. How lit- 
tle he dreamed — that manly, modest 



40 Life of George Washington, 

youth — as he pored over those records 
of daring and self-sacrifice and life-long 
patriotism, that his name was to rank 
in history among the noblest of those 
whose lives he was drinking in with 
such ardor in his brief vacations ! 

During these years the great question 
on which hung the future of North 
America was coming to the front. It 
could not, in the nature of things, be 
otherwise. The peace of Aix-la-Cha- 
pelle had left the English and French 
boundaries on the Western Continent an 
open question. Each nation laid abso- 
lute claim to the vast territories beyond 
the Alleghanies. Each, too, no doubt 
felt its claim to be the supreme one. 
Each was eager to occupy the land in 
advance, and thus establish the right 
of possession. 



From Boyhood to Manhood, 41 

The French claim was, no doubt, a 
strong one. Their explorers and mis- 
sionaries had penetrated far beyond any 
others into the vast western wildernesses, 
and they insisted on their double right 
of discovery and possession. They had 
scattered forts and outposts in this im- 
mense region, and they were bent on 
uniting Canada by a long chain of forts 
with Louisiana. 

This resolution brouo^ht the two na- 
tions into direct antagonism. If the 
French claims were once admitted, the 
future development of the English colo- 
nists would be confined to the narrow 
area between the Atlantic and the Alle- 
ghanies. The great continent which 
stretched to the West, and which the 
Americans had long regarded as the 
fair heritage of their descendants, would 



42 Life of George Washington. 

become the home of an alien and hos- 
tile race. 

The young nation, settled sparsely 
along the sea-board, had strong in- 
stincts of the splendid career that lay 
before her. That vast, unexplored, in- 
land world would afford the fitting field 
on which her untried energies could 
freely expand. It was of transcend- 
ent importance to secure the ground 
at once. The English colonists met the 
French claims by boldly insisting on 
their prior ones. They declared that 
**when they had established a settle- 
ment on the eastern coasts of America 
their rights extended in the same lati- 
tude from sea to sea," and they now 
demanded the cession of the coasts of 
the Bay of Fundy, and the destruction 
of every French fort in the territory. 



From Boyhood to Manhood, 43 

At this time there was not a single 
white settlement in all the great world 
beyond the Alleghanies. But a com- 
pany, among whom Washington's elder 
brothers were prominent, had obtained 
from the Crown a grant of immense 
tracts in the Ohio Valley. Their pur- 
pose was to occupy the land at once 
with settlements and garrisons. Here, 
again, the French had forestalled them. 
Their posts were already planted, their 
roads laid out in the disputed terri- 
tory. 

This encroachment was not to be 
borne. The English company resolved 
to eject the intruders by peaceful ways, 
if possible ; if not, by the old stern one 
of battle. 

A sudden war spirit spread through 
the colonies. Everybody felt that the 



44 Life of George Washington, 

enemy must be at once driven out of 
their strongholds. The militia were 
put in training. Washington shared 
the popular feeling. He . had early 
given evidence that he inherited the 
martial spirit of his race. In his child- 
hood **he liked to make soldiers of his 
schoolmates. They had their mimic pa- 
rades, reviews, and sham fights under 
him." All this, probably, had gone on 
in that old, green, wild-daisied meadow 
which bordered the Rappahannock. 

George was eighteen now. It should 
always be borne in mind that, with his 
tall form, strong and erect as a young 
oak, with his grave features, his re- 
served, manly bearing, he gave an Im- 
pression of being considerably older 
than he was. Stirred by the talk and 
example all about him, he took lessons 



From Boyhood to Manhood. . 45 

in fencing also, and practiced for a while 
with immense ardor. 

At this juncture, however, Lawrence's 
health, which had always been delicate, 
broke down. He had desired to pro- 
cure for his young brother a major's 
commission, but all these plans had now 
to be deferred. The physicians insisted 
on change of air, and at their advice 
the brothers, so strongly attached to 
each other, sailed for Barbadoes in Sep- 
tember, 1 75 1. This was the only time 
that Georofe Washineton ever set foot 
on any soil but his native one. 

The novel world, the mild climate, 
the quiet life, all had varied attractions 
until the younger of the travelers had a 
severe attack of small-pox. The illness 
lasted for about three weeks. He al- 
ways retained some slight marks of it. 



46 Life of George Washington, 

On his recovery, George Washington 
went to a theater. It must have 
formed a memorable event in his Hfe, 
for he had never visited one before. It 
was afterward observed that he always 
showed a decided taste for the drama. 

No chano^e of climate could avert 
the doom that was hanging over Law- 
rence. With that restlessness which ac- 
companies pulmonary disease, he re- 
solved to seek Bermuda in the early 
spring. George left him and returned 
home, intending to rejoin his brother 
with his sister-in-law. But all these 
plans were put to flight by the sudden 
appearance of Lawrence, who barely 
reached Mount Vernon to die there. 

He left a large estate. Its manage- 
ment now devolved almost entirely on 
George. The property was to revert to 



From Boyhood to Manhood. 47 

him in case Lawrence's only daughter 
should die without heirs. The months 
that followed must have been crowded 
with varied tasks and heavy responsi- 
bilities for a youth who had hardly 
reached his majority. Heavier ones, 
however, were soon to follow. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE YOUNG HOPE OF VIRGINIA. 

Governor Dinwiddie, of Virginia, 
was looking about for the right per- 
son to send on a mission to the put- 
posts of the French and the wigwams 
of the Indians. The white men were 
using every art to draw the western 
tribes into an alHance. The mission 
would be of immense importance to the 
colonies. It required a man of varied 
qualities — cool, hardy, of tried courage 
and great sagacity. He would have to 
deal with the wily French commanders 
of the garrisons ; with the treacherous 
savages of the frontiers. He would 
take his life in his hands. 




LAFAYRTTK — THE FklENU OF AMERICA. THIS WAS PAINTKIJ i;Y 
C. W. PEALE IN 1778. 



The Young Hope of Virginia, 49 

George Washington was finally chosen 
for an expedition whose delicacy and 
danger required such a varied equip- 
ment. It was characteristic that he set 
off the very day that he received his 
credentials. He was twenty-two at that 
time. 

The whole story of the journey reads 
like a romance. It is not possible to 
tell it within the limits of this sketch. 
It was slow, toilsome traveling by the 
swollen rivers, through the solitary 
wildernesses. The little party which ac- 
companied Washington was composed 
of an Indian interpreter, several hardy 
frontiersmen, and Christopher Gist, an 
intrepid pioneer, who had a long ac- 
quaintance with Indian character and 
life. 

Under the lowering November sky, 



50 Life of George Washington, 

they pushed on to Logstown. The 
winter had come early that year. 
Fierce storms made the way through 
the wild country almost impassable. 
But they reached the Indian quarters at 
last, and, after various delays, held the 
council on which so much depended. 
Washington conducted himself at this 
juncture with great tact and discretion. 
His experience with the Indians in his 
government surveys must have served 
him immensely now. The young white 
man succeeded in gaining the confi- 
dence of the savages. They offered 
him the sacred pledge of wampum ; 
they declared him and his people their 
brothers ; they promised to resist all 
the efforts of the French to draw them 
into a treaty ; and, at his own request, 
they agreed to furnish him with an 



The Young Hope of Virginia. 51 

escort to Venango — the headquarters of 
the enemy. ^ 

Another long journey dS seventy miles 
through the wilderness f<pllowed. Bit- 
ter weather, fierce tempests, and heavy 
snows combined to make the way long 
and perilous. At last, on the 4th of 
December, 1753, the tired party caught 
sight of the French colors flying at the 
lonely outpost of Venango. They were, 
to George Washington, the unwelcome 
sign of the intruder and foe. How lit- 
tle he could dream that a day — still in 
far distant years — was coming when 
those colors would fly for him at the 
masthead, and move in closest alliance 
with his own to the battle ! 

The travel-worn party was received 
and entertained with a rough hospital- 
ity. Washington, however, soon per- 



52 Life of George Washington. 

ceived that secret efforts were on foot 
to detach his Indian allies from their 
allegiance to the English. They were 
welcomed at headquarters with open 
arms, and plied with liquor; and the 
whole party was detained at Venango by 
every conceivable stratagem. But Wash- 
ington at last succeeded in getting off 
with his sachems. 

Four more days of bitter travel 
throuo^h the winter wildernesses broug-ht 
them to the fort on French Creek, 
fifteen miles from Lake Erie. Here 
Washington and his interpreter were 
received with great military form at the 
gate, and conducted to the officer In 
command, an ancient, silver-haired chev- 
alier, who united the bearing of the 
soldier to all the grace and ceremony 
of the old French school. 



The Young Hope of Virginia, 53 

Nothing could exceed the courtesy of 
Washington's reception. He announced 
his errand, deHvered the governor's 
messages and papers, and, with his 
native frankness, would have entered 
at once on the business which had 
brought him, in the depths of the 
winter, to the fort on French Creek. 
But the chevalier politely declined to 
receive the documents in the absence 
of his superior, who was hourly ex- 
pected from the next post. 

On the arrival of the captain, the 
formalities of presentation were again 
gone through with, and the officers 
held a private council over the Gover- 
nor's complaints and covert threats in 
case the French did not peaceably 
evacuate the territory into which they 
had forced themselves. 



54 Life of George Washington, 

Washington was not, of course, ad- 
mitted to the conference. But the next 
two days were consumed in private 
councils. The young Virginian had 
evidently thrust his head into the lion's 
mouth. He had now to match himself 
with veterans well-seasoned in all the 
arts and diplomacy of French camps 
and courts. It was, doubtless, in his 
disfavor that he could not speak a word 
of their tongue. ** But he made the 
most of his time. He took notes of 
the plan, dimensions, and strength of 
the fort, and of everything about it ; 
he gave orders to his people also to 
take an exact account of the canoes 
already at hand, and of those that were 
being constructed, to carry troops down 
the river in the spring. " Nothing 
seems to have escaped his keen, trained 



The Young Hope of Virginia, 55 

observation. But though he was treat- 
ed — so far as appears — with unvary- 
ing courtesy during his whole stay, he 
saw clearly that subtle schemes were 
at work to undermine his influence with 
the savages and to retard his move- 
ments. When it came to any discus- 
sion of business, his questions were 
evaded, his remonstrances unheeded. 
He could get no satisfaction from these 
people, with their polished manners and 
their slippery talk. At that lonely out- 
post, surrounded by foes, in the midst of 
intrigues, he was filled with distrust and 
anxiety. Here again, as before, the 
sachems of the party were plied with 
liquor. In order to detain them awhile 
at the fort, a promise of guns was held 
out to them — an irresistible temptation 
to savages. 



56 Life of George Washington. 

♦ 
Washington's coolness and resolution, 

at this crisis, barely extricated his party 
from the toils of the enemy. The 
chevalier at last delivered a sealed re- 
ply to the governor's letter. The In- 
dians, bent on receiving their guns, 
besought him to delay his departure 
until the next morninof. He consented 
at last. The French were oblieed to 
keep their word and deliver their pres- 
ents at the time appointed, after which 
the little company embarked in their 
frail canoes on French Creek. The 
stream was swollen, turbid, and full of 
ice. The navio^ation was so daneerous 
that it was five or six days before the 
travelers once more cauo^ht sieht of the 
French colors floating triumphantly at 
Venango. Here Washington was forced 
to part from his Indians for a day or 



The Young Hope of Virginia. 57 

two, as one of the chiefs had met with 
an accident. The young commander 
had thus far maintained his ascendency 
over his sarv^age alHes, but he naturally 
feared the result of French influence in 
his absence. The circumstances, how- 
ever, would not admit of delay, and on 
the 25th of December he and his little 
party of white men set out for home. 
The wonder was that he ever lived to 
tell the tale of that winter journey. 
Even the pack-horses broke down amid 
the terrible hardships of the frozen wil- 
derness. Washington was forced to dis- 
mount and make his way as he could 
through the hurtling tempests and the 
heavy snows. At last he and Gist 
strapped their packs on their backs, 
took their guns, and, leaving the jaded 
men and beasts to make their slower 



58 Life of George Washington. 

progress, struck bravely into the ice- 
bound forests. 

Here new perils awaited them. They 
feared that Indians, incited by the 
French, were lurking on their path. 
At a settlement where they stopped, 
and which bore the inauspicious name 
of Murdering Town, they engaged a 
guide, as the travelers were wholly un- 
acquainted with the trackless wilds 
through which they must pass. Though 
he seemed eager for the work, " took 
Washington's pack upon his back," and 
insisted that he had chosen the most 
direct course, Gist's suspicions were 
soon aroused. The veteran backwoods- 
man was used to the ways of Indians. 
He feared this one was playing them 
false. 

After they had proceeded a number 



The Young Hope of Virginia, 59 

of miles through the forest, Washing- 
ton's strength gave out. Anxiety may 
have had something to do with this, for 
he shared his companion's suspicions. 
The Indian grew sullen. At last, when 
they reached an opening in the woods, 
where he had contrived to be some dis- 
tance in advance, he suddenly turned 
and fired on the white men. His aim, 
happily, missed both. 

They were not altogether unprepared. 
Gist, accustomed to the stern vengeance 
of the frontier, would have put the In- 
dian to death on the spot. But his 
companion, whose young wrath one 
would suspect would naturally be 
roused to swift vengeance, now inter- 
posed to spare the savage's life, and 
Gist reluctantly consented. 

The guide pretended that his gun 



6o Life of George Washington. 

had gone off by accident. The travel- 
ers thought it the best pohcy to accept 
his explanation and permit him to de- 
part to his cabin. Conscious of the 
peril of remaining in his vicinity, they 
pushed on through the long, bitter 
night and the whole of the next day, 
not knowing but any instant the ter- 
rible war-whoop, the brandished toma- 
hawk, might bring them to bay. 

They reached the Alleghany to find 
the great river filled with masses of 
drifting ice. A day was spent in mak- 
ing a rude raft that would enable them 
to cross. It was launched after sunset. 
The strong current swept Washington 
off the logs into the water. It seemed 
for the moment that all was over, and 
that the brave young life which the 
savage's aim had missed, and the winter 



The Young Hope of Virginia, 6i 

tempests and the snow-bound wilder- 
nesses had spared, would be swallowed' 
up in th^ cold, hurrying waters. But 
with a last effort Washington caught at 
one of the raft-logs, and barely saved 
himself from drowning. 

The raft, partly guided by their poles, 
drifted to a low island in the river, 
where the half-frozen men managed to 
land, and watch out the terrible night. 
The next morning they succeeded in 
picking their way over the closely 
packed ice to the river-bank. That 
night they reached the house of one of 
the frontiersmen who traded with the 
Indians. Under this rude, hospitable 
roof their perils were over. 

Two weeks later Washington laid the 
letter of the French commander before 
Governor Dinwiddie. The great quali- 



62 Life of George Washington, 

ties which the young officer had dis- 
played in this mission, the coolness, 
the sagacity, the consummate tact 
with which he had dealt with shrewd 
Frenchman and wily Indian, the cour- 
age with which he had carried himself 
through all the varied perils which had 
beset him, made a vivid impression 
throughout the province. " From that 
moment," we read, ''he was the rising 
hope of Virginia." 



CHAPTER IV. 



WINNING HIS SPURS. 



The troubles on the frontier thick- 
ened. It was evident there was no 
way of settling them but the old, hard 
one of battle. Forces were raised in 
the province, and the command of the 
little army was offered to Washington. 
It was like his native modesty to de- 
cline so heavy a responsibility, and he 
was accordingly appointed second in 
command. 

It would take long to tell how the 
mistakes, delays, and obstinacies of 
others, on whom he was forced to de- 
pend, tried his soul and half-paralyzed 
his utmost energies. He could not 



64 Life of George Washington, 

know how all these vexations and fail- 
ures — so hard for youth to bear — were 
training him for the great work which 
would not begin for him until he had 
reached the prime of his years. 

On a rainy May morning of the year 
1754, the first gun was fired in the 
long struggle for possession of the Val- 
ley of the Ohio. We all know that 
Washington was in this battle ; that 
Jumonville, the young French com- 
mander, was killed; we know that the 
Americans won the day, and sent home 
twenty-one prisoners to the colony. 
This battle roused all the instincts of 
the soldier. *' I heard the bullets 
whisde," Washington wrote to his 
brother, in the flush of that first vic- 
tory, '' and, believe me, there is some- 
thing charming in the sound." 




Washington's first headquartkks on wills' creek. 



Winning His Spurs. 65 

This speech — so Horace Walpole 
relates — was afterward repeated to 
George II. ''He would not say so, if 
he had been used to hear many," was 
the king's significant comment. 

He, at least, could speak from expe- 
rience. The second of the monarchs 
whom the House of Brunswick had 
given to England had the passion, the 
obstinacy, and the coarseness of his 
race; but he had its virtues also; and 
among these was the valor he had 
proved on the great battle-fields of 
Oudenarde and Dettingen. 

Many years afterward, somebody had 
the curiosity to ask Washington if he had 
ever written those words to his brother. 
**If I said so," was the reply, that at 
once explained and excused a speech 
so unlike himself, '* I was very young." 



66 Life of George Washington, 

But that natural elation over his first 
victory was followed by days of cruel 
disappointment, severe hardships, and 
hopes deferred. The young commander 
had soon to face another side of war 
than that swift whistling of bullets 
which had roused all his martial in- 
stincts. Patience, fortitude, forbearance, 
were qualities which he was called to 
exercise in the most trying situations. 
The incompetency, obstinacy, and jeal- 
ousy of those under whom he served 
were at the bottom of his difficulties. 
In the early summer he found himself 
reduced to extremities. The supplies 
failed ; the troops were starving. Even 
the Indians grew impatient and dis- 
gusted with remainmg in the service of 
the white men. 

Under such circumstances the end 



Winning His Spurs. 67 

could not fail to come swiftly. On the 
1st of July, after a rapid and toilsome 
march in sultry weather, over rough 
roads, with half-famished troops, Wash- 
ington drew up his small forces on the 
grassy plains of the Great Meadows. 
In the center of these stood a fort pro- 
tected by trenches and palisades, and 
which Washington, with a grim humor, 
had named "Fort Necessity — because of 
the pinching famine which had prevailed 
during its construction." 

The retreat had not taken place an 
hour too soon. A brother-in-law of the 
young Jumonville who had been shot in 
that memorable skirmish which opened 
the long contest. Captain de Villiers by 
name, was in pursuit of Washington 
with a large force of French and Indians, 
eager to avenge the death of his relative. 



68 Life of George Washington, 

A deserter had brought the French 
Captain intelHgence of Washington's en- 
campment at Great Meadows, and of 
the famished condition of the troops. 

Washington meanwhile had made the 
most of his time. He had endeavored 
to enlarofe and strenofthen Fort Neces- 
sity. He had worked with his men, 
sharing their heaviest labors, '' felling 
the trees, and rolling up the trunks to 
form a breastwork." He must some- 
times have smiled grimly to himself as 
he recalled his flush of triumph over 
his first victory. That had been fol- 
lowed by months which demanded the 
exercise of constant patience and the 
severest self-control — months filled with 
harassing cares and cruel disappoint- 
ments. 

At this critical juncture a fresh mis- 



Winning His Spurs, 69 

fortune occurred. Most of his Indian 
allies, disheartened by the near approach 
of an enemy greatly superior in num- 
bers, deserted the white men. 

Washington's courage held out against 
this accumulation of difficulties until on 
the morning of the 3d of July, when, as 
he was at work, with his half- starved 
troops, on the fort, a sentinel came in, 
wounded and bleeding. The enemy was 
at hand ! 

Washington drew up his men outside 
of the works, and awaited the onset. 
Before noon there was sharp firing of 
musketry among the trees on the rising 
ground that surround the Great Mead- 
ows, but the enemy were too remote to 
do any harm. 

Washington was on the alert. He 
suspected an ambuscade. He ordered 



70 Life of George Washington. 

his men to keep their posts, and not 
to fire a gun until the enemy should 
come in sight. The French still kept 
under cover, while their musketry rat- 
tled in the woods. At last, Washington 
ordered his jaded troops to fall back 
into the trenches, and fire whenever the 
foe ventured in sight. In this way the 
long summer day was spent in skirmish- 
in e between the two armies. Mean- 
while, the rain poured in torrents into 
the trenches. The troops were half- 
drowned ; many of the muskets became 
unfit for use. 

It was eight o'clock at night when 
the French sent a request for a parley. 
Washington was at first reluctant to 
grant it. He knew the wiles of the foe, 
and feared this was only a ruse by 
which they intended to introduce a spy 



Winning His Spurs, 71 

inside the fort. But, while he hesitated, 
a second messenger arrived, requesting 
that an officer might be sent to treat, 
under a parole. 

Washington was forced to accede. 
There was nothing to be done now but 
to surrender to the enemy, who had 
closed in on his starving troops with 
forces that it would be certain destruc- 
tion to face in battle. The terms 
which the enemy offered were twice re- 
jected. The third time the paper was 
read by a flaring candle, in a fast fall- 
ing rain, where the dim light was with 
difficulty kept from going out, and, amid 
the blackness of the short summer night, 
the French terms were accepted. 

The next morning the draggled little 
army marched out of its stronghold. 
They went bravely — those half-starved 



72 Life of George Washington, 

men — with drums beating, and colors 
flying, and all the honors of war. 
Washington at last brought the small 
force of Virginia volunteers in safety to 
Wills' Creek, where they found ample 
provisions, which, by the most shameful 
negligence, had not been forwarded to 
them. 

Here Washington left his troops to 
recover their strength, while he pro- 
ceeded to Williamsburg to lay his mili- 
tary report before the governor. 

A little later the young captain and 
his officers received the thanks of the 
House of Burgesses for their bravery 
and their gallant defense of their 
country. 

But, grateful as this recognition of his 
services was to Washington, he knew 
that the old influences which had made 



Win7iing His Spurs, ' y^, 

his campaign so disastrous were still at 
work, and that they would confuse and 
cripple all his future action. 

Matters culminated at last when Gov- 
ernor Dinwiddie interfered in delicate 
questions of military rank. Washing- 
ton's sensitive honor was deeply ag- 
grieved when he learned that his col- 
onel's commission would in future allow 
him neither rank nor emolument. He 
refused to retain an empty title. He 
immediately resigned his commission 
and returned home. 

He settled at Mount Vernon — Law- 
rences young daughter having recently 
died — and was soon absorbed in the cares 
of his estate, in superintending his moth- 
er's affairs, and in promoting the welfare 
of his young brothers and sister. 

In the rural life and work so dear to 



74 Life of George Washington, 

him the sense of his late wrongs and 
disasters would have been gradually 
superseded by other interests; but the 
march of events did not permit him to 
remain long in that congenial life. 



CHAPTER V. 

braddock's battle-field. 

In 171^3, General Braddock came out 
from England. He was a brave officer, 
seasoned by long service, for he had 
been forty years in the Guards. He 
was by temperament and habit a mar- 
tinet. His religion was military rou- 
tine. He had one of those obstinate, 
inflexible natures, which can never 
adapt themselves to new surroundings 
and expedients. He would lead his 
troops to battle in rude American wil- 
dernesses, or to the wild warfare of an 
Indian ambush, in the same fashion that 
he would have paraded them in St. 
James's Park. He could not conceive 



76 Life of George Washington, 

of carrying on a campaign in a new, 
unsettled country after any methods 
but those of the old continental battle- 
fields, with which he was so familiar. 

Thoroughly brave and honorable, 
there was not, probably, an English 
general at that time less fitted to take 
command of an American army than 
the one which England now sent out 
as Commander-in-Chief to her Colonies. 

At this period Washington was, as 
we have seen, absorbed in the care of 
his estates. His aofricultural tastes were 
his strongest ones. Even in his youth 
they always contended with his mili- 
tary proclivities, and in later years 
became the one passion of his life. 

But now the booming of cannon 
among the quiet shades of Mount Ver- 
non, the stately ships of war on the 



Braddock' s Battle-field. jy 

Potomac, the military stir and din all 
about him, roused the temper of the 
soldier. Washington grew eager to join 
Braddock's forces as a volunteer. He 
longed to witness a brilliant campaign, 
under the command of a famous gen- 
eral, with all the military equipment of 
the Old World at his command. This 
desire was not long in reaching the 
Commander - in - Chief He, probably, 
heard on all sides praises of the young 
Virginia colonel. The latter was soon 
offered a position on the staff. The 
acceptance of this high honor would 
involve considerable expense, while no 
pay was attached to the position. But 
military ardor was now uppermost. 
Washington became one of General 
Braddock's aids-de-camp. 

The army from over the seas moved 



78 Life of George Washington, 

slowly through the summer weather. 
Encumbered by immense baggage- 
trains, and all sorts of superfluous stores, 
the troops toiled over rugged roads, that 
had first to be broken, through trackless 
wildernesses. Braddock, true to himself, 
held rigidly to all the military rules and 
ceremonials, so burdensome and su- 
perfluous under such novel conditions. 
He had no knowledge of the country, 
and no idea of the methods of wild bush- 
fighting, or of the habits of Indian 
warfare. 

All attempts to enlighten him proved 
worse than futile. He would listen to 
no representations from those familiar 
with the country. Obstinate, and easily 
offended, he snubbed all those who at- 
tempted to give him the advice of which 
he stood in such need. He more than 



Braddock' s Battle-field, 79 

once resented Washington's attempts to 
give him some information on matters 
of vital importance ; but, during the 
long advance, circumstances so often 
proved the wisdom of the young aid- 
de-camp's advice, that the general finally 
condescended to act on it. 

Washington was with the English 
army on the fatal day of July 9, 
1755. He had been taken seriously 
ill on the march, but, though he suffered 
intensely, he had persisted in keeping 
at his post, until the general kindly in- 
terposed and forbade him to proceed. 

Washington was left behind, a guard 
was assigned him, and he was placed 
in the care of Dr. Craik, the life-long 
physician and friend whose career and 
fame are so closely interwoven with 
Washington's. 



8o Life of George Washington, 

Braddock's conduct on this occasion 
proves that, despite all his obstinacy and 
devotion to military punctilio, he was at 
bottom a kind-hearted man. 

The moment when the young aid- 
de-camp watched the proud little army 
move off into the wilderness without 
him must have been a bitter one. But 
he hoped to be able to rejoin the forces 
in a couple of days. Braddock had 
pledged his word of honor that he 
should be allowed to witness the battle. 
So his eagerness had brought him in 
time to the front, almost at the risk of 
his life. 

That day, which was to fill so many 
homes in England and America with 
mourning, opened fair on the banks of 
the Monongahela. What a picture of 
life and color and movement the whole . 




washin(;ton and Lafayette. 




BIBLE USED AT THE INAUGURATION OF WASHINGTON. 



Braddock's Battle-field, 8i 

scene must have made, framed by the 
green, ancient woods ! The soldiers, we 
read, were marshaled at sunrise, and 
seemed arrayed more for a fete than a 
battle. One sees it all — the gay scar- 
let uniforms, the brown water elancine 
in the sunlight, the bayonets flashing 
bright against the summer green, as 
the army moved proudly along to the 
" Grenadiers' March ; " the colors flying, 
the drums beating, the fifes playing. 
It was a orallant sitrht — such as the 

o o 

New World had never witnessed. It 
made an impression on Washington 
that was never effaced. In after years, 
when he himself stood at the head of 
armies, he used to say that these troops, 
as they moved across the ford and 
alonof the river banks, the sunlio^ht 
flashing on the scarlet lines and the 

6 



82 Life of George Washington, 

burnished steel, formed the most beauti- 
ful si^ht he ever beheld. 

The Indians lay in wait along the 
line of march. These savage hordes 
were to make that day one of the sad- 
dest in early American history. They 
had been hovering on the track for 
days. They had chosen their time and 
place well. They were always sure to 
do that. 

Suddenly, from behind trees and 
thickets, and in ravines, broke the ter- 
rible war-whoop. English soldiers had 
never heard that sound. The next 
moment a deadly fire burst from the 
forest. 

Every schoolboy knows the story of 
Braddock's defeat. One cannot wonder 
that it came, sharp and sudden and ter- 
rible, as it did. Everything had been 



Braddock's Battle-field, 83 

badly managed. Nothing had been 
done to guard against a surprise. 
There was no foe to be met In honest 
warfare ; there was only that fearful 
yelling, that terrible uproar, to be heard, 
while the constant firing from unseen 
hands laid low the flower of the 
army. 

Washington — ^just from his sick-bed — 
rode calm and fearless amid the rain of 
the bullets. No war-whoop could shake 
his trained nerves, no Indian ambus- 
cade take him by surprise. In the 
midst of the carnaofe — officers and men 
falling thick around him — he did all 
that man could to rally the troops, and 
retrieve the fortunes of the day. 

He was a splendid mark for the foe. 
Many a gun In the forest was aimed 
at him, but each shot fell harmless as 



84 Life of George Washington, 

though from magic armor. Years after- 
ward, Washington met an old Indian 
sachem, who related the story of that 
day, and confessed that he and his 
comrades had frequently aimed their 
guns at him as he dashed, a conspicu- 
ous mark, into every part of the field. 
But, when no shot took effect, they 
gave up firing. The sachem and his 
band believed that the Great Spirit 
had given the young officer the 
charmed life that could not be lost 
in battle. 

Had the soldiers heeded his orders — 
had they ''raked the ravines with 
grape-shot " — the day, even then, might 
have been saved. But the bravest sol- 
diers were paralyzed. They could have 
held their own against any foe in the 
field. The Indian rifle was leveled by 



Braddock's Battle-field. 85 

unseen hands in the shelter of the 
woods, while the yells of demons shook 
the air and unnerved the soldiers. In 
vain '' Washington sprang from his 
horse, wheeled and pointed a field- 
piece toward the woods. His example 
could not inspire the men with courage. 
Not a platoon would quit the line of 
march ; not a soldier scale the hill on 
the right, where the firing was heavi- 
est." 

The end came at last, in headlong 
flight. At sunset the broken lines fled 
along the banks of the Monongahela, 
a wreck of the proud army that had 
crossed the river in the morning, with 
drums beating and banners ikying, eager 
for the fray, and sure of a swift victory 
over their French and Indian foe. 

On the battle-field lay hundreds of 



86 Life of George Washington, 

the dead and wounded. The enemy, 
busied there with scalping and plunder, 
did not long pursue the routed army. 

Braddock, like his officers, had car- 
ried himself with consummate bravery 
throughout the dreadful scene. Horse 
after horse was killed under him, but 
he still remained in the thick of the 
battle, and when at last he fell, mor- 
tally wounded, it was with difficulty 
they could get him from the field, 
where he desired to die. He saw his 
mistake when it was too late to re- 
deem it. In the long retreat, amid 
which the brave, obstinate, old sol- 
dier was tenderly guarded and cared 
for, he must have remembered his 
young aid's advice that he should 
throw out flanking parties, and be pre- 
pared for Indian ambuscades. If he 



BraddocM s Battle-field. Z"] 

had heeded the warning he would not 
have lost the day. 

General Braddock died fojjr days 
later at Great Meadows, the scene of 
Washington's surrender. The dying 
soldier was very grateful for the atten- 
tions that soothed his last hours ; in 
proof of which he bequeathed his young 
aid his favorite horse — a splendid ani- 
mal — and Bishop, his faithful body- 
servant. 



. CHAPTER VI. 

THE KNIGHT SANS PEUR ET SANS RE- 

PROCHE. 

Washington reached Mount Vernon 
before that disastrous month had closed. 
His health had suffered greatly. But 
his country could not leave him time to 
recruit. The defeat of Braddock had 
filled the orovince with consternation. 
It had shaken that old faith in the in- 
vincibility of British troops, which was 
a part of the creed of every American. 
Bewildered alarm had taken the place 
of the old blind confidence. Less than 
three weeks after his return, George 
Washington was appointed commander 
of all the forces in the colony. 



Sans Peur et Sans Reproche, 89 

His mother now interposed. She 
had been accustomed to having her 
authority treated with the utmost def- 
erence, and perhaps did not fully real- 
ize that her son was now no lonofer the 
lad whose naval career she had once 
checked on its threshold. Her letters 
entreated him — her first-born — not to 
risk a life so precious in another of 
those savage frontier battles. But, with 
all his habitual deference to the mater- 
nal wishes, Washington could not, at 
this critical moment, suffer them to be 
paramount to the claims of his country. 
And on the 14th of September he re- 
paired to Winchester, where he. estab- 
lished his headquarters. 

Vexing questions met him on the 
threshold of his new career. Parties 
arose and quarrels ensued, on matters 



90 Life of George Washington. 

of rank and precedence, between the 
kine's officers and those who held 
commissions from the colonial gov- 
ernors. All this struck at the basis of 
his own authority. Washington at last 
determined to refer these matters to 
General Shirley, at Boston, the Com- 
mander-in-Chief who had succeeded 
Braddock. 

The journey, which began on Febru- 
ary 4, 1756, forms a bright little epi- 
sode in this harassing period. Wash- 
ington was accompanied by his aid-de- 
camp and an officer of light horse. 
They made the long winter journey on 
horseback, with servants in livery, in 
the old Virginia style. The small party 
was in the heyday of youth and hope. 
They stopped in Philadelphia and New 
York, and no doubt the picturesque 



Sans Peur et Sa7is Reproche. 91 

little cavalcade made a brilliant impres- 
sion on the society of the old colonial 
cities. For the first time Washington 
entered New England and beheld Bos- 
ton — -the busy, quaint, old commercial 
town by the bay — little dreaming" of 
the part he was yet to play in her his- 
tory. 

The journey must have been full of 
novel experiences and social pleasures 
to the young colonel and his friends. 
To this period belongs the story of his 
acquaintance with Miss Mary Philipse, 
the beautiful sister-in-law of his friend, 
Beverly Robinson. He met the young 
lady on his return to New York, and 
there is no doubt that her varied 
charms produced a powerful impression 
on his fancy and heart. 

Washington had all a brave soldier's 



92 Life of George Washington, 

delight in the society of women. There 
was a great deal of the tender chivalry 
of the old knight, "without fear and 
without reproach," in his nature. But 
his busy life in American frontier wil- 
dernesses had afforded him little time 
or opportunity for the indulgence of 
any romance. The presence of this 
eleeant woman had the added charm of 
novelty to one always susceptible to the 
o-races of her sex. His admiration was 
no secret to anybody who saw them 
together. There seems to be no doubt 
that Mary Philipse — the New York 
belle of that winter of 1756 — would 
have had another suitor for her hand 
had Washington remained longer in the 
city. But at the critical moment he 
was summoned to Virginia, and, a little 
later, Captain Morris — his aid-de-camp 



Sans Peur et Sans Reproche. 93 

in the Braddock campaign — made the 
most of his time, and won the heart, 
hand, and fortune of the young woman. 
Whatever disappointment Washington 
may have felt, he took it philosophi- 
cally. He was, at this time, in the 
midst of scenes likely to dissipate all 
soft memories and regrets. A terrible 
panic had seized the country about him. 
The Indians were ravaging the front- 
iers. This meant burning houses and 
slauofhterinof families. The white set- 
tiers were flying in wild terror before 
them. That fair Valley of the Shenan- 
doah — its pleasant homes wasted by the 
savaee — was now one wide scene of 
havoc arid desolation. It seemed on 
the point of relapsing into the primitive 
wilderness from which civilization and 
industry had rescued it — about to be- 



94 Life of George Washington, 

come again the hunting-ground of the 
Indian, the haunt of the wild beast. 

On his arrival at Winchester, Wash- 
ington found the inhabitants frantic with 
fear. Every hour brought its fresh tale 
— true or false — of families massacred, 
or besieofed and famishinor in the stock- 
aded forts, to which they had fled for 
shelter. The people were in agonies of 
terror lest the savages were on their 
way to attack the town. The helpless 
inhabitants — their imaginations inflamed 
by the belief of their imminent peril — 
lived over all the horrors of an Indian 
massacre, from the first paralyzing war- 
whoop to the last scene of scalped 
bodies and burninof homes. In this ex- 
tremity they turned to Washington as 
their sole hope and defender. Women 
gathered about him, ''holding up their 



Sans Peur et Sans Repi^oche. 95 

children, and imploring him with tears 
and cries to save them from the sav- 
ages. He looked around him on the 
suppliant crowd, with a countenance 
beaming with pity, and a heart wrung 
with anguish." 

Washington's position, at this time, 
** shut up in a frontier town, destitute 
of forces, surrounded by savage foes," 
was one replete with anxiety and trial. 
It miofht have shaken the nerves of a 
veteran commander, and he was a 
young man of only twenty-four. 

But he acted with his usual prompt 
energy. The first thing to be done 
was to lay the condition of affairs 
before the sfovernor. His letter must 
have had something of the effect of a 
thunderbolt, for Dinwiddie, usually so 
dilatory and confused in his movements, 



96 Life of George Washmgton. 

instantly dispatched orders for militia 
from the upper counties to march to 
Washington's assistance. Happily, the 
danger was averted. The Indians went 
away to their hunting-grounds with cap- 
tives and spoils, and Winchester was 
spared. 

As time went on, all sorts of delays, 
vexations, and interferences fretted Wash- 
ington's ardent spirit, and wore on his 
health. It is a miserable story, on the 
details of which the limits of this volume 
make it impossible to dwell. The gov- 
ernor, narrow, obstinate, and soured, be- 
cause Washinorton had been elevated to 
the command in preference to a favorite 
of his own, exercised a petty tyranny 
over all the young officer's movements. 
The latter often found his suggestions 
unheeded or imperfectly carried out. 



Sans Peur et Sans Reproche, 97 

His statements met with indefinite and 
ambiguous replies. Nothing could have 
been more irritating to a mind of 
George Washington's clear, practical 
quality than the lax, confused methods 
of his superior. 

The unpleasant relations which con- 
tinued to exist between* the two were, 
no doubt, aggravated by the governor's 
character, which was one singularly lia- 
ble to relapse into doubt and indecision 
at critical moments. He was easily 
offended, too ; impatient of contradiction, 
he was even absurd enough to make 
complaints regarding the manner of his 
subordinate's correspondence. A little 
Scottish faction, intent on disgusting 
Washington, so that he would resign 
and make room for his rival, added 
fresh fuel to the governor's hostility. 



98 Life of George Washington. 

It was in defiance of all the young 
colonel's remonstrances that Dinwiddie 
insisted on making headquarters at Fort 
Cumberland, and, to strengthen this post, 
he ordered a withdrawal of the necessary- 
troops and supplies from other forts and 
from Winchester. By this unwise move- 
ment he weakefned the defenses of the 
frontier, and threw military affairs into 
infinite confusion, besides incurring enor- 
mous losses and expenses. 

All these thinors must have made that 

o 

year's service a bitter one to George 
Washington. He had the ardent spirit 
of his years, for they were, as we have 
seen, only twenty-four. He had the 
fiery temper of his race. He could not 
look into the future and see how all 
these vexations and trials were training 
him in the long patience, the varied re- 



Sans Peur et Sans Reproche. 99 

sources, the steady courage with which 
he was yet to play his part on the 
world's stage — a part the greatest that 
had ever yet fallen to man. 

But the year, that must have seemed 
so long in passing, was now drawing 
to a close. Frequent illnesses warned 
Washington that incessant care and 
anxiety were undermining his health. 
He struggled on for awhile ; but the 
increasing violence of his attacks forced 
him to yield at last to the urgent solici- 
tations of his friend, the army surgeon, 
Dr. Craik. Washinofton once more re- 
signed his post and retired to Mount 
Vernon. 

Governor Dinwiddle's administration 
came to a close with the opening of the 
new year, and he returned to England. 

For some months after Washington's 



loo Life of George Washington. 

return to Mount Vernon, the condition 
of his health seriously alarmed his 
friends. But the splendid forces of his 
constitution at last rallied, and tided 
him over the danger. He did not, 
however, resume his command at Win- 
chester until the following April. He 
did so under brightening auspices. The 
new governor had not arrived from 
England, but his representative appreci- 
ated Washington's character and serv- 
ices, and was ready to aid him in all 
his plans. 

Of more importance than all else, 
William Pitt was now at the head of 
the British Cabinet. The American cam- 
paign felt at once the inspiration of 
his genius. Parliament' had resolved to 
carry on the war in the colonies with 
new vigor. Large supplies were to be 



Sans Peur et Sa7ts Reproche. loi 

forwarded from England. The old ques- 
tion of rank between the king's and 
the provincial officers, which had been 
the occasion of so much bitter feeling, 
was, by Pitt's wisdom and tact, happily 
settled. 

This must have been a source of 
great satisfaction to Washington. The 
year before he had made that long 
winter's journey to Boston in the hope 
of obtaining a king's commission. He 
had been disappointed. Before he re- 
turned to Mount Vernon he had made 
a last fruitless effort for the prize his 
services had so richly earned, and which 
would have established his authority on 
a secure basis. It is a curious fact, 
however, that George Washington was 
destined never to hold a king's com- 
mission. 



I02 Life of George Washington. 

The young commander gathered his 
scattered forces at Winchester and dili- 
gently disciplined the recruits. They 
were about nine hundred strong. They 
were destitute of nearly all the equip- 
ment necessary for an army. His let- 
ters to his superiors made forcible rep- 
resentations of the condition of the Vir- 
ginia troops, but without producing the 
desired effect. He at last, however, re- 
ceived orders to repair to Williamsburg 
and lay the case in person before the 
Council. 



CHAPTER VII. 

LOVER AND SOLDIER. 

Washington, with his habitual prompt- 
ness, started for the old county-town of 
Williamsburg. Bishop, the long-trained 
military servant who had been the dying 
bequest of General Braddock, accom- 
panied his master. 

How little the young officer, bur- 
dened with military cares and responsi- 
bilities, dreamed that the journey from 
Winchester to Williamsburg was to be 
the most eventful of his life ! The 
story of that day sheds over those 
stern times a sudden glow of romance. 
It broke across Washington's life in 
the most undreamed-of way, when the 



I04 Life of George Washington, 

soldier's heart and brain were absorbed 
in thoughts and cares for his country. 
But that brief interlude of romance was 
to make the joy and content of all the 
years to come. 

Washington had crossed the Pamun- 
key — a small branch of the York River 
— and was spurring his horse ahead, 
when he was accosted by Mr. Chamber- 
layne, the proprietor of the grounds on 
which he had landed, wh(5 now insisted 
on his stopping to dinner. Washington 
declined, feeling it impossible to spare 
the precious moments. But the other 
would take no refusal. There was com- 
pany at the house that day, among 
whom was the beautiful young widow, 
Martha Parke Custis, of whose charms 
Washington could not have failed to 
hear, though there seems to be no 



Lover and Soldier, 105 

record of his having met her before. 
Mr. Chamberlayne announced the pres- 
ence of the lady as a fresh inducement 
for Washington to pause. It is likely 
that this fact turned the scale, for the 
latter at last consented to dismount, 
and, a little later, the host had the 
pleasure of introducing the young officer 
to the guests assembled under the hos- 
pitable roof 

The young widow whom he met at 
the gay little dinner party, must have 
been very charming at that period. 
We all know what a beautiful old 
woman she made. She was about three 
months younger than Washington, who 
was now twenty-six. Her figure was 
small and graceful. Her eyes and hair 
were of dark hazel. The world is 
familiar with that delicate, refined, 



io6 Life of George Washhigton, 

womanly face. It is precisely the sort 
of one w(! conld imai^ine lookinir down 
on us from amid a g-allery of ancient 
portraits, with bearded knii^dits and fair 
women, in some old Kn<disli castle. 
Mrs. Custis, like Washington, had come 
of one (jf the ancient families of the 
proud old colony. She had, like him, 
moved in its highest social life, and 
been nurtured amid its habits and tra- 
ditions. 

The young widow had been left 
with a large fortune, which she shared 
with her two children — a boy and 
girl. 

Washington's heart — so the story 
runs — was taken by surprise. Witli the 
bright hazel eyes shining upon him, the 
dinner hour passed like a happy dream. 
With all his gallant feeling for woman, 



Lover and Soldier. loj 

his bearing toward her was, like him- 
self, serious and dignified. i^erhaps it 
never lost a touch of the ceremonious 
formality in which he had been reared. 
Yet his handv>>me presence and his 
grave, courteous manner must have 
had a great attraction for the women 
whose charmed circle he occasionally 
entered. 

Bishop, with his long training under 
General Braddock, was not likely to 
fail in punctuality. He was at the door 
with the horses on the moment. But 
for once their owner ''loitered in the 
path of duty/' Nothing affords stronger 
evidence of the impression that Martha 
Custis had made on ^^eorge Washing- 
ton, than the fact that the remainder of 
the day was passed in her society. The 
restive horses pawed in vain at the 



io8 Life of George Washington, 

door. Washington had resolved to ride 
during the night to make up for the 
lost hours. But the soft spell that held 
him was too powerful to be broken. 
At last the order to depart was counter- 
manded. Bishop must have been im- 
mensely astonished as he led the horses 
back to their stalls. His master spent 
the night under Mr. Chamberlayne's 
roof. The next morning Washington 
once more started for Williamsburg. 

But the brave heart had never beat 
so high, and softer moods must have 
mingled with the young soldier's 
thoughts of camp and battle-field, as he 
spurred along the ancient Virginia turn- 
pikes. That halt for dinner had been 
his fate. 

The remainder of the story must be 
told briefly. The young commander, 



Lover and Soldier, 109 

who had won his laurels so early, and 
whose praise was on many lips, had 
made a deep impression on the woman 
he was so eager to win. Fortune, in 
this instance, was kind to him. Mrs. 
Custis's home was in the vicinity of 
Williamsburg. Washington must have 
met her frequently during the brief stay 
that military affairs permitted him. In 
their case nothing ruffled the course of 
true love. The crowding war duties 
that summoned him back to Winchester 
allowed brief time for courtship. He 
had a lover's fear lest, in his absence, 
another should supplant him, and win 
the prize he coveted. Matters appear 
to have been arranged with a kind of 
soldier-like promptness and decision be- 
tween the pair. At all events the suitor 
was successful. Before he left Will- 



no Life of George Washington, 

iamsburg, Martha Custis had promised 
George Washington she would be his 
wife, and it was settled that their mar- 
riage should take place at the close of 
the campaign. 



•CHAPTER VIII. 

MARRIAGE AND MOUNT VERNON. 

The old familiar specters met Wash- 
ington on his return to Winchester. 
An idle camp had produced its inevi- 
table results. The troops had grown 
restless and wearied with the service. 
The neighborhood in which they were 
quartered, was offended by the frequent 
disturbances of the soldiers, and tired of 
the burden which their presence in- 
volved. At last Washington received 
the welcome order to break up camp 
and repair to Fort Cumberland. 

One event, however, greatly lightened 
the trials of this summer. Washington 
was now no longer the ardent young 



112 Life of George Washington, 

soldier whose heart had bounded at the 
whistling of the bullets. Military ambi- 
tions had ceased to influence him. He 
was looking forward eagerly to the 
close of the campaign, when he would 
resign his command and settle down at 
Mount Vernon with the woman of his 
choice. 

With this purpose in view, he had 
become a candidate for election to the 
House of Burgesses. When the election 
came off at Williamsburg, his presence 
there was regarded by his friends as 
all-important for his political Interests. 
But it was characteristic that he would 
not leave his command, even for a brief 
time, and though he had received leave 
of absence. 

He had, too, during the encampment 
at Winchester, enforced martial lav/ 




THE BOSTON MEDAL. 




THE VERNON MEDAL. 



Marriage and Mount Vernon. 113 

with a good deal of rigor. His severity 
had sometimes endangered his popular- 
ity. Several other candidates were in 
the field. But the electors of Frederick 
County, by a large majority, chose 
George Washington for their represent- 
ative. 

The summer wore to its close. 
Washington, with his sickly, disheart- 
ened troops, was chafing in his camp at 
Fort Cumberland. He must often have 
asked himself, in bitterness of soul, if 
this was the brilliant campaign which 
had lured him from Mount Vernon, with 
the stately ships of war moving slowly 
along the Potomac, and the cannon 
booming among the peaceful groves ! 

A lover's impatience was now added 
to the man's longings to resign his 
commission and return to private life. 



114 Life of George Washington, 

The soldier in him had had its brief 
day. With his nature and character, his 
dehght in war would be certain to be a 
part only of his proud, aspiring youth. 
All his hopes and ambitions, as we 
have seen, centered now about the 
home to which he was looking forward 
with such passionate longings, and 
which must have grown doubly dear to 
him, when he thought of the beautiful 
woman who would one day be its mis- 
tress. 

Meanwhile, in opposition to all his 
remonstrances, a military road was be- 
ing toilsomely opened through the heart 
of Pennsylvania, from Raystown to Fort 
Duquesne. Sixteen hundred men were 
employed on this needless work, while 
vast expenses were incurred in its pros- 
ecution. But the British officers had 



Mar7'iage mid Mount Vernon, 1 1 5 

conceived a terrible Idea of the old 
" Braddock Road," and the Pennsyl- 
vania traders, who had their own Inter- 
ests to serve, threw all their influence 
in favor of a new route through the 
province. 

It must have been a happy day for 
Washington when he received orders to 
break up the camp at Fort Cumberland 
and move with his forces to Raystown, 
where the British Army was assembled 
under the command of General Forbes. 
The young Virginia colonel met with 
a most courteous reception, and found 
that his opinions had great weight with 
the Commander-in-Chief, both in private 
and in war councils. 

Notwithstanding the vast bodies of 
men engaged during the summer in 
opening the road, they had only ad- 



ii6 Life of George Washington. 

vanced forty-five miles. Fifty more 
through the primeval wilderness had 
yet to be penetrated before Duquesne 
would be reached. Meanwhile, a mili- 
tary post had been established at Loyal- 
hanna by Colonel Bouquet. With a 
body of nearly two thousand men under 
his command, he was tempted to dis- 
patch eight hundred into the enemy's 
country. An enterprise of this kind 
naturally possessed a strong attraction 
for the soldiers. Washington, familiar 
with the ground and the foe, used 
all his influence to defeat the expe- 
dition ; but it was in vain. The idea 
of a dashing military exploit seized the 
imagination of the officers ; and, having 
learned nothing from the terrible les- 
sons of past Indian warfare, Major 
Grant set off into the wilderness at the 



Marriage and Mount Vernon. 1 1 7 

head of eight hundred picked soldiers. 
A part of this force was composed of 
Washington's Virginia regiment, '' sent 
forward by him from Cumberland, under 
Major Lewis." 

It was the old story of Braddock's 
defeat — on a smaller scale this time. 
Former experience had not made Major 
Grant wiser or more wary. With fool- 
hardy recklessness he led his troops 
into the enemy's land. Again the sol- 
diers found themselves in the fatal am- 
bush ; again the dreadful war-whoop 
filled the air. A fearful scene of rout 
and carnage followed. Fifty Virginians, 
familiar with Indian habits of fighting, 
were, happily, on the ground. They had 
been placed in charge of the baggage. 
They came now, under Captain Bullitt, 
to the rescue. The little company 



ii8 I-if^ of George Washi7tgton, 

formed a barricade with the wagons, 
ralHed a part of the panic-stricken sol- 
diers, gave a brief check to the enemy, 
gathered the fugitives, and made a 
rapid retreat. Grant and Lewis barely 
succeeded in saving their lives by sur- 
render to a French officer. 

Washington, at Raystown, learned the 
sad story which so amply justified his 
opposition to the enterprise. Bitterly 
as he must have felt the defeat, it could 
hardly have taken him by surprise. 
His old faith in the invincibility of Brit- 
ish troops had, as we have seen, long 
since disappeared. The laurels those 
seasoned veterans had won on Conti- 
nental battle-fields were doomed to 
wither fatally in American wildernesses 
and amid Indian ambuscades. 

But the defeat only won fresh honors 



Alarriagc and Mount Vernon. J 19 

for the Virginia troops, who had so 
bravely brought off the detachment at 
the critical moment, it must hav(i been 
a proud day for their Colonel, when 
they received the puljlic compliments of 
the British General. A litthj later Cap- 
tain Bullitt was honored with a major's 
commission. The regular army was at 
last forced to acknowledge the valor of 
those provincial troops whom they had 
so long regarded with undisguised con- 
tempt. 

Washington received fresh honors. 
He had now the command of a division 
''partly composed of his own men, 
which was to keep in advance ui the 
main body, clear the roads, throw out 
scouting parties, and repel Indian at- 
tacks." 

On the 5th of November the whole 



I20 Life of George Washington. 

army was at last assembled at Loyal- 
hanna. With the winter close at 
hand, with fifty miles to traverse 
through the wilderness, it seemed that 
Washington's predictions were again to 
be fulfilled, and that another years 
campaign was about to be brought to 
an ignoble close. 

A council of war was held. It was 
decided that a further advance that 
season was impossible. At this criti- 
cal moment, how^ever, three prisoners 
were brought into camp. Their report 
of the condition of affairs at Fort Du- 
quesne, of the desertion of the Indians, 
of the garrison, without hope of re-en- 
forcements or supplies, fired the flag- 
ging courage of the council. It was at 
last resolved to push forward. The 
march was again resumed, and this 



Marriage and Mount Vernon. 121 

time, tardily taught by experience, 
" without tents or baggage, and with 
only a light train of artillery." 

Washington still kept the advance. 
The road beyond Loyalhanna, strewn 
with human bones, afforded an eloquent 
commentary on the late methods of In- 
dian warfare. That sad spectacle must 
have silenced the last voice that had 
been raised in opposition to Washing- 
ton. But the army kept on unmolested 
in its mournful march through the No- 
vember wilderness. The fifty miles were 
at last traversed, and F'ort Duquesne 
rose in sight. 

The army now advanced with every 
precaution. They anticipated a resolute 
defense ; but they were disappointed. 
The French fort, so long the terror of 
the frontier, the object of so many 



122 Life of Geo7^ge lVashingto7i, 

hopes and fears, and for which so much 
precious blood had been spilled, was 
doomed to fall at last without a blow ! 

An hour came which must have 
seemed to reward Washington for all 
the wrongs, toils, and perils he had 
undergone. On November 25, 1758, he 
marched with the advanced guard into 
Fort Duquesne, and planted the English 
colors where the French had waved so 
long. The enemy had departed the 
night before. They were reduced to 
extremities. No re-enforcements had ap- 
peared. The foe was within a day's 
march. "The French commander em- 
barked his troops at night in bateaux, 
blew up his magazines, set fire to the 
fort, and retreated down the river by 
the light of the flames." 

This closed the long struggle between 



Marriage and Mount Vernon, 123 

the French and English races for pos- 
session of the land beyond the Allegha- 
nies. To-day, the busy, crowded city of 
Pittsburo^ stands on the old site of 
Fort Duquesne, and on the very spot 
where the checkered military career of 
George Washington seemed to have 
closed forever in victory. 

At the end of that year Washington 
resigned his commission, and retired 
from the service. His health had been 
shaken by anxieties and hardships ; 
but he had seen the grand object of 
long, struggling years attained. The 
*' Old French War " was ended. Pros- 
perity once more smiled upon his native 
province. The Indians at last sub- 
mitted to their conquerors, and a treaty 
of peace had been concluded with all the 
tribes between the Ohio and the lakes. 



124 ^^fo ^/ Geo7^ge Washington, 

Tidings of that victory must have 
thrilled the whole land. The old haunt- 
ing terror had disappeared. There was 
a flash of joy on every face. The name 
of George Washington was to be for- 
ever associated with the hour of deliv- 
erance and thanksgiving. 

He must have turned his back on 
the scenes of his late warfare with a 
heart full of unutterable gladness and 
gratitude. Mount Vernon was awaiting 
him. The fair face of the woman he 
was to wed, would welcome the victor 
with smiles. In her society, and amid 
the rest and quiet of his home, his 
health would rally again. The outlook 
must have been very fair to George 
Washington in those closing winter 
days of 1758. 

On the 1 6th of the following January, 



Marriage and Mount Vernon. 125 

he and Martha Custis were married at 
the White House, near WilHamsburg, 
the residence of the bride. The wed- 
ding was celebrated with all the gayety 
and lavish hospitality of the old colonial 
time, and its traditions floated down to 
later generations. 

The three months that followed were 
spent by the newly-married pair in the 
bride's home, after which they repaired 
to Mount Vernon. Before they left 
Williamsburg, Washington had taken his 
seat in the House of Burgesses. An 
amusing little incident occurred on his 
installation. The members had secretly 
agreed that the young Colonel should 
be received among them with a signal 
mark of respect. 

When he took his seat for the first 
time, the Speaker, who was a personal 



126 Life of George Washington. 

friend of the new member, thanked him 
on behalf of the colony, in some glow- 
ing periods, for the splendid services 
which he had rendered his country. 

Washington was quite overcome by 
this unexpected honor. He rose to re- 
ply; but the courage that had carried 
him undaunted through the storm of the 
bullets, the nerves that had held them- 
selves calm amid the yells of the Indian 
ambuscade, failed the young hero now. 
He stood blushing, stammering, trem- 
bling before the House, and could not 
utter a word. 

The Speaker came gracefully to his 
aid. ''Sit down, Mr. Washington," he 
said. '' Your modesty equals your 
valor, and that surpasses the power of 
any language I possess." 

This little scene has a peculiar inter- 



Marriage and Mount Vernon, 127 

est, because it forms Washington's in- 
troduction to civil life. We can imagine 
the pride' and amusement with which 
his newly wedded wife must have list- 
ened, a little later, to the story. 

George Washington spent the next 
sixteen years at Mount Vernon. He 
now settled himself down to his place 
in life, and to fulfill, with his native 
conscientious thoroughness, the varied 
duties and responsibilities of a large 
landed proprietor. 

The domain which he had inherited 
stretched fair and ample about him, 
with its noble groves, its vast wood- 
lands — haunts of deer and foxes and 
wild game — its fields, ripening through 
the long summer into splendid harvests. 
The borders of the estate were washed 
by more than ten miles of tide-water. 



128 Life of George Washington, 

The mansion stood on a height which 
commanded a magnificent view up and 
down the Potomac, and the grounds 
were laid out in the EngHsh fashion of 
those days. Here Washington Hved his 
hospitable, busy, happy life. It does 
not seem possible that any man during 
the last century could have had sixteen 
years of pleasanter existence than those 
which fell to the proprietor of Mount 
Vernon. He had, of course, the super- 
intendence of a large estate, and the 
inevitable cares and responsibilities 
which that involved. But the work was 
thoroughly congenial, and the burden 
lay lightly on that strong, energetic 
manhood. Business, too, was varied 
with pleasure — with visits to Annapolis, 
the gay little seat of the Maryland gov- 
ernment ; with dinners at home and 



Marriage and Mount Vernon. 129 

among the neighboring gentry. Wash- 
ington's social instincts were strong. 
He was the most hospitable of hosts. 
His own personal tastes and habits 
were simple, but his position demanded, 
and his fortune justified, an ample and 
generous style of living. The old colo- 
nial society in which he moved, reflected 
a good deal of the ceremony, the pomp, 
the stately grace of the Old World. 
Washington's long intimacy with the 
Fairfaxes, his intercourse with British 
officers, must have had its influence 
upon his tastes. Mrs. Washington, no 
doubt, indulged her own. She had 
brought an ample fortune to Mount 
Vernon. She would naturally desire to 
live in a style befitting its mistress. 
Nobody familiar with her picture, and 
skillful at reading faces, can doubt that 



130 Life of George Washington, 

she would enjoy the refinements and 
elegancies of life. Though her husband 
always appeared on horseback, she had 
her chariot and postilions in livery for 
her own use and for her guests. 

Washington carried some of the old 
military habits Into his home life. He 
rose early, and his simple breakfast of 
tea and Indian cakes could not have 
occupied many minutes. When the 
meal was over, he mounted his horse 
and rode over his estate, giving the 
most careful attention to its varied 
management, and taking part in the 
manual labor whenever that was neces- 
sary. He kept his own accounts, and 
balanced his books with the same ex- 
actness with which he had drawn up 
the social codes of his boyhood, and the 
surveyor's charts of his youth. If he 



Marriage and Mount Vernon, 131 

was a kind, he must have been also an 
exacting, master. Shiftless ways, care- 
less work, would never long escape the 
keen, all-observant eyes; and, where the 
offense was voluntary, would be likely 
to meet with small indulgence. But 
nobody who had dealings with the pro- 
prietor of Mount Vernon ever had cause 
to question that high sense of justice 
which oroverned him in each relation of 

o 

life. 

When the hunting season came on, 
Washington's old passion for the chase 
was sure to revive. He was out sev- 
eral times each week with his neigh- 
bors and his hounds. The woods re- 
sounded with the shouts of the riders 
and the baying of the dogs. The hunt 
was followed by a grand dinner-party 
at some residence in the neighborhood. 



132 Life of George Washington, 

Washington enjoyed a day like this im- 
mensely. It always brought out the 
social and jovial side of his character. 

The Potomac also afforded him vast 
enjoyment, with the fishing in its waters 
and the hunting on its borders. There 
were seasons when the herring came 
up the river in vast shoals, and the 
servants mustered on the banks to 
draw in the seine, which must have 
been accomplished with much labor and 
fun. Then there were canvas-back 
ducks to be found among the reeds 
and bushes along the banks of the 
noble river. 

As. one dwells on the picture of those 
fair surroundings, of the happy, varied 
in-door and out-door life at Mount Ver- 
non, it seems a good deal like reading 
some idyl of the poets. 



Marriage and Mount Vernon. 133 

To crown all the rest, Washington's 
domestic life was a very happy one. 
The wife he had chosen appears to 
have been remarkably adapted to a 
man of his tastes and temperament. 
The name of Martha Washington is 
dear to Americans. Had it not been 
for the long seven years' trial of the 
Revolution, the world would never have 
known what sort of woman reigned 
amid the elegant seclusion of Mount 
Vernon. She who, when the time came, 
left, uncomplainingly, that home of 
grace and ease, to endure the priva- 
tions and hardships of the camp at 
Morristown and the terrible winter at 
Valley Forge, proved herself worthy of 
the immortal name she bears, and de- 
serves her place in the grateful memory 
of a nation. 



134 Life of George Washington, 

Those sixteen years have been truly 
called "the halcyon season of Washing- 
ton's life." The busy, dignified, gracious 
master of Mount Vernon was not much 
given to poetic fancies. Yet it would 
not have been strange if, during those 
smooth, prosperous years, he had some- 
times wondered what there was left to 
ask, had the ancient fable come true 
again, and the Fates brought to his 
door all honors and all fortunes for his 
choosing. 

He may, it is true, have felt a regret 
that no children came to bear his name 
and prattle about his knee ; but he 
showed for his wife's boy and girl the 
interest and tenderness of a father. 



CHAPTER IX. 

ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 

It was impossible for a man like 
Georofe Washington to be absorbed in 

o o 

interests and affections that were wholly 
personal. All the great questions which 
at that time were agitating Europe, and, 
more especially, the legislation of the 
mother country, her domestic and colo- 
nial policy, must have been charged 
with vital interest for him. The great 
statesmen of the England of his day — 
the ministers who made her government 
and shaped her history, during the mid- 
dle of the century — must have been fre- 
quent subjects of discussion when the 
host and his guests rode over the 



136 Life of George Washington. 

grounds or sat at the hospitable board 
of Mount Vernon. 

Washington had been, like all the 
Virginia colonists, brought up in an 
atmosphere of intense loyalty to the 
mother country. England was home to 
them. They were proud of her power, 
of her high place among the nations of 
Europe. They regarded her glory as 
their own. We have seen that loyalty 
was in the fiber of the old Washington 
breed. The race qualities were strong 
in their American descendant. He had 
dreamed in his youth that he should 
some time visit England, and see the 
ancient cradle of his house ; but the 
charms of Martha Custis and the cares 
of Mount Vernon, had prevented his 
carrying out the wish, until it was 
finally abandoned. 



England and America, 137 

We have seen that there was one 
dread which, for thirty years, haunted 
the scant populations along the eastern 
seaboard of America. It was a dread 
which the New England Puritan and 
the Virginia planter alike shared with 
all Protestant England. Their common 
peril must have drawn the colonies in 
closer sympathy with the mother coun- 
try. Crises came when the Pretender 
shook all Great Britain — when even 
George II., courageous with the cour- 
age of his hard old race, almost gave 
up everything for lost, and determined 
to die fighting valiantly in his palace 
for the crown and kingdom that the 
Stuarts had come back to claim. 

Fourteen years after the battle of 
Culloden had forever settled the suc- 
cession in favor of the Brunswick line, 



138 Life of George Washington, 

George III. ascended the English 
throne. This event was the occasion 
of great rejoicings throughout the 
realm. The young sovereign, unlike 
the previous monarchs of his house, 
was a native of England. At the time 
of his accession he showed some quali- 
ties which touched the popular heart 
and imagination. People everywhere 
rang the changes on the purity, the 
piety, the filial character of the young 
King. He was yet to prove that his 
intellect was of the narrowest order ; 
while his education, under his arbitrary 
mother, Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, had 
unhappily strengthened all the defects 
of his character. 

" George, be a King ! " was the ad- 
vice which she constantly rung in his 
ears through his childhood ; and he 



England and America, 139 

proved, through his long life, that the 
words had made an ineffaceable impres- 
sion on a nature at once narrow, big- 
oted, and hopelessly obstinate. Indeed, 
his limited understanding and his lack 
of imagination, made it impossible for 
him to conceive that there could be 
any side of a question but the one 
which he approved. Nobody suspected, 
however, at the time of his accession, 
the lurking insanity which was to make 
the closing years of his reign almost as 
tragic as King Lear's. 

No doubt the colonies shared in Eng- 
land's rejoicings, when a vessel brought 
the first tidings of the new reiorn to 
America. Bonfires probably blazed and 
bells rang, to emulate the celebrations 
three thousand miles away. How little 
anybody at that time could have fore- 



140 Life of George Washington, 

seen that the new king's obstinacy and 
tyranny would, less than thirty years 
later, force his loyal colonies into the 
rebellion which was to separate them 
forever from his crown ! 

This is not the place to enter on the 
long chapter of colonial wrongs. It 
may be said here, however, that their 
history proves that America's affection 
for England never met with a response. 
This fact was largely due to the selfish 
commercial instincts of Great Britain. 
It was the interest of her manufactures 
and commerce to restrict and suppress 
the growth and independence of the 
young nation beyond the sea. Eng- 
land's legislation for America, inspired 
by the selfishness and jealousy of her 
commercial classes, was intolerably op- 
pressive. Many of the industries of the 



England and America. 141 

country were ruined ; nearly all lan- 
guished under restraints and prohibi- 
tions interposed solely for the benefit 
of Great Britain. 

America, with her vast seaboard, saw 
her ports closed by navigation laws 
against foreign vessels. She was forced 
to carry her exports only to countries 
belonging to Great Britain. All her 
imports must be made from England 
and in English ships. Even the trade 
between one colony and another was 
hampered and prohibited in ways that 
now seem incredible. 

A people whose instincts of freedom 
had been nourished alike by their history 
and traditions, and by the noble country 
which they were everywhere reclaiming 
from savage and wild beast, could not 
tamely submit to injustice and oppression. 



142 Life of George Washington, 

America, with the prescience of her 
great future opening before her, was 
jealous for her Hberties, and resolved to 
maintain them at any cost. 

There was, consequently, no question 
on which the colonies were so sensitive 
as that of taxation. This, as they had 
no representation in the English Parlia- 
ment, they regarded as slavery. Any 
attempt of the mother country to raise 
a revenue from colonial imports was 
certain to raise a storm among the 
people. 

During the long, peaceful administra- 
tion of Sir Robert Walpole, while the 
House of Brunswick held its insecure 
tenure of crown and kingdom, the deli- 
cate matter of colonial taxation was 
wisely kept in the background. But 
after the accession of George III., Par- 



England and America, 143 

liament boldly affirmed its right to tax 
the colonies. Various duties were im- 
posed, and the following year the hated 
Stamp Act was passed. 

It was ominous that the first protest 
against the Stamp Act, should come 
from the old, aristocratic Province of 
Virginia. Her history, her traditions, 
the forms of her domestic and social 
life, naturally tended to bring the oldest 
of the colonies in closer sympathy than 
her younger sisters with the mother 
country. 

Washington was in his seat In the 
House of Burgesses on that memorable 
May day when the young lawyer, Pat- 
rick Henry, made the Immortal speech 
which to this day fires one's heart to 
read. 

As Washinorton listened to that stern 



144 ^^y*^ ^f George Washingto7i. 

arraignment of the English Govern- 
ment, that splendid defense of Ameri- 
can liberties, his soul must have glowed 
with patriotic ardor. 

His letters, after his return home, 
show the new trend of his thoughts, 
and the anxious outlook with which he 
was beginning to regard the future of 
his country. His pages are no longer 
filled with tranquil pictures of the happy- 
life at Mount Vernon. A shadow, des- 
tined to deepen with every year, has 
fallen across the peaceful days. 

Washington was a young man — only 
thirty-three — when he listened to that 
speech of Patrick Henry's, which rung 
like a tocsin throughout Virginia, and 
thrilled the heart of America. The 
dream of a last appeal to arms was 
still far off, but there were signs in the 



England and America, 145 

times — there was a general feeling of 
suspicion and resentment in the very air 
— which no keen observer could fail to 
detect, and which must have criven 
every lover of his country many a mo- 
ment of anxious forebodine. 

The repeal of the Stamp Act, in the 
following year, at first gave the country 
great satisfaction; but this was soon 
succeeded by fresh disappointment and 
indignation. A fatal clause was added 
to the repeal. England reaffirmed, in 
the strongest manner, her right to tax 
her colonies. A little later, fresh im- 
posts on various articles of commerce, 
proved that she was bent on exercising, 
in the most arbitrary manner, the right 
she arrogated to herself 

The years which lie between the 

speech of Patrick Henry before the 
10 



146 Life of George Washington, 

Virginia House of Burgesses and the 
opening of the Revolution, are a well- 
trodden track of American history. 
Every schoolboy is familiar with that 
ground. Popular discontent and agi- 
tation continued to spread through the 
land. Fear and distrust of England 
slowly supplanted the old reverence 
and loyalty. The mother country laid 
her hand with heavier weight upon her 
colonies. More and more she began to 
assume the character of their oppressor 
and foe. 

The consciousness that their common 
liberties were in peril, the conviction 
that their only hope must lie in an in- 
timate union of interests and measures, 
drew the provinces closer together. The 
feeling of alienation and jealousy which, 
at the beginning, existed more or less 



England and America. 147 

among them, slowly disappeared. The 
colonies agreed on retaliatory measures. 
A compact, that they would import no 
articles on which imposts had been 
laid, struck a blow at the heart of 
British commerce. 

America had founded many hopes on 
the good-will which she believed the 
kinof rnust cherish toward her. But it 
be^an to be more and more evident 
that these hopes were futile. As the 
real character of the third monarch of the 
House of Brunswick came to the surface, 
he showed that his naturally arbitrary in- 
stincts were not held in check by an 
enlightened understanding. His faults 
had, as we have seen, been strength- 
ened by his unfortunate training. Many 
of the traditions on which the youth of 
the future King of England had been 



148 Life of George Washington, 

nurtured were despotic enough for the 
atmosphere about the cradle of PhiHp 
II. or of Louis XIV. With his char- 
acter and his education it was impos- 
sible that George III. should be any- 
thing but the powerful, inveterate foe 
of American freedom. 

Durine the decade which succeeded 
his accession, his popularity had greatly 
waned at home. The corruption and 
obsequiousness of the ministers and para- 
sites with whom he surrounded himself, 
gradually estranged the loyalty of his 
people. It was impossible to disguise 
the fact that venality and subserviency 
were the real passports to the sovereign's 
favor. All the noblest sentiments, all the 
patriot instincts of the nation, were out- 
raged by the character and measures of 
those on whom the monarch bestowed his 



England and America, 149 

confidence, and to whom he confided the 
most precious interests and the highest 
oflfices of the state. 

The wisest and best men of the nation, 
the men who had made the prosperity 
and glory of England at home and 
abroad, and who had inherited the spirit 
and teachings of Hampden and Pym, of 
Russell and Vane, were ignored at the 
court, while they beheld the nation bur- 
dened with taxes, to support the minions 
of the king. All this time it became 
more and more evident to the real states- 
men of England, that a storm was brew- 
ing beyond the seas, and that the meas- 
ures of the government to suppress the 
liberties and ruin the manufactures of 
America, would at last goad the colo- 
nies to desperation. 

But other interests were, for a while, 



150 Life of George Washington, 

lost sight of in the all-absorbing one of 
the Middlesex election, which shook Eng- 
land like an earthquake. The contest, 
whatever disguises of form and name it 
might take, was the old one between the 
liberties of the people and the preroga- 
tive of the king — a contest which had 
made the history of the seventeenth cent- 
ury lurid with civil wars, and ended at 
last by setting the House of Brunswick 
on the throne that the Stuarts had lost. 
During the long battle of the Middle- 
sex election, the name of John Wilkes 
became the most popular in England, 
and the letters of Junius held up, in the 
light of their terrible irony, the false 
policy of the king and the incapacity 
and shameless venality of his ministers. 
While the right of John Wilkes to his 
seat in the House of Commons, and the 



England and America, 151 

arraignment of the government by Junius, 
were convulsing England, the long strug- 
gle must have been watched with eager 
interest across the seas, in the quiet 
home by the Potomac. 

Though the owner had reached the 
prime of his years, his name was not one 
familiar to English lips. Far behind him 
now lay his stormy youth. Just before 
him a mightier storm was gathering. 

Washington had been, during the 
years that brought him to middle life, a 
profoundly interested observer of the 
critical relations between England and 
America. His love of country was his 
deepest feeling. No purer flame of pa- 
triotism ever burned in the soul of an- 
cient hero, than that which shone with 
calm, steady light in the heart of the 
simple Westmoreland planter. He was 



152 Life of George Washington, 

to prove, when the time came, that no 
sacrifice of Hfe or fortune, of home or 
happiness, would be too great for his 
country. 

Deeply as he resented the conduct of 
England, he maintained, through this 
time that tried men's souls, his calmness 
of speech and attitude. Yet, as one 
high-handed measure of Parliament fol- 
lowed another, and revealed the temper 
of the government and its purpose to 
crush the young liberties of America, 
Washington could not conceal from 
himself the fact that there might come 
a day when his country would have no 
choice but the last appeal of freemen. 

But this reflection was unutterably 
painful. Washington had the tempera- 
ment with which old associations and 
habits are powerful. He had no delight 



1 1 1/'///. 




MRS. WASHINGTON AT THE TIME OF HER MARRIAGE. 



England and America. 153 

In the stormy atmosphere of revolutions 
and rebellions. He long clung to the 
hope that a better spirit would prevail in 
the counsels of those who held the des- 
tinies of America in their hands. He 
knew that she had wise and powerful 
friends in Parliament and near the 
throne. That consciousness must have 
given him courage in many a dark hour. 
He must have felt a terrible recoil when- 
ever he dwelt on the possibility of seeing 
that flag in whose service he had won 
such honors, and to which he had given 
the best years of his youth, arrayed 
aorainst him. Still, if the issue ever 
came, he could never have doubted where 
it would find him. 

At this juncture it became important 
that Washington should make a trip to 
the Ohio River. The '* soldiers' claims," 



154 Life of George Washington, 

as they were called, were not adjusted. 
These meant the promised award of 
lands to men who had served in the 
'' Old French War." The Six Nations 
had recently sold their territories south 
of the Ohio to the British Crown. It 
was necessary that Washington should 
visit the wild lands, to select special 
tracts for which he would make applica- 
tion to government, in order that the 
long-standing soldiers' claims should be 
liquidated. 

This journey must have formed a 
bright episode amid the dark fears 
and forebodings of that time. Wash- 
ington set out in the pleasant Octo- 
ber weather, with his favorite com- 
panion. Dr. Craik. They visited the 
scenes of their early exploits. The 
two companions lived over their youth 



England and America, 155 

again. They had friendly conferences 
with the Indians. They swept in their 
canoe down the broad current of the 
Ohio. Deer bounded along the shores; 
flocks of wild game darkened the sky 
overhead. Here Washington could in- 
dulge, to the top of his bent, his old 
sporting proclivities. Once more, when 
night fell, they encamped on the river 
bank, and tasted the keen delight of a 
hunter's supper. The winds of the 
old Westmoreland meadow must have 
seemed to blow through those wild, 
free, happy days. They lie close to 
the long, dark, stormy years on which 
Washington was now to enter. Indeed, 
this expedition to the Ohio may be said 
to form the last real holiday of George 
Washington's life. Splendid honors and 
fetes awaited him long afterward ; but 



156 Life of George Washington, 

these came when the close of the Rev- 
olution had left him, as he pathetically- 
said, "an old man." 

During this journey Washington made 
a visit to Fort Duquesne. It must have 
been a thrilling moment when he looked 
once more on the scene where his mili- 
tary career had ended eleven years 
before. The old days of hardships, 
struggles, and cruel disappointments 
could not fail to crowd on his memory 
as he gazed on the familiar site. Log- 
huts of Indian traders were scattered 
about, where, a century later, the busy, 
prosperous city of Pittsburg was to lift 
its spires. 

This 3^ear of 1770, in which Wash- 
ington made his journey to the Ohio, 
was memorable for the change which 
took place in the British Cabinet — a 



England and A7nerica, 157 

change which was to have so tremen- 
dous an influence on the fortunes of 
America. Lord North was placed at 
the head of the British Government. 
The new minister had none of the 
''divining genius" or the large aims of 
the true statesman. He was as incapa- 
ble of feeling the temper of the times 
as he was of adapting himself to it. 
He had no conception of a broad and 
generous policy in dealing with the new 
questions and events of his own age. 
These he was alike unfitted, by under- 
standing and character, to compre- 
hend. 

It seemed a terrible irony which, at 
this crisis, placed the fortunes of the 
American Colonies in the hands of Lord 
North. He had one merit, however ; 
he was a favorite with his royal master. 



158 Life of George Washington. 

George III. had at last found a minis- 
ter after his own heart. He could be 
safely trusted to carry out to the bitter 
end the oppressive policy of the 



:ing. 



CHAPTER X. 

GATHERING OF THE STORM. 

A NEW chapter in the history of Eng- 
lish and American affairs opened with 
Lord North's administration. He be- 
gan, as was to be anticipated, with a 
fatal mistake. All the colonial taxes 
were to be revoked, except that on tea. 
This was retained, as Lord North ex- 
pressly stated, in order to prove the 
RIGHT of England to tax America. The 
colonies met this measure with one 
which was certain to deal England a 
blow where she was most sensitive ; 
they entered into a wide covenant to 
taste no tea. 

Here, again, it was significant that 



i6o Life of George Washington, 

Virginia led her sister colonies. The 
method of retaliation originated with her 
Assembly. 

In the midst of this public excitement 
a great gloom fell upon Mount Vernon 
in the loss of its only daughter. She 
had always been delicate, and sickened 
suddenly in her seventeenth year. 

Washington's public position involved 
frequent absences from home. He 
now returned to find the young girl, 
to whom he was so deeply attached, in 
the last stages of consumption. In his 
o-rief he knelt at her bedside and 
poured out prayers for her recovery. 
This was one of the instances in which 
Washington's feelings overcame his 
usual reserve. His religion was deep 
and fervent, but it was not emotional. 
It partook of the strength and reticence 




WASHINGTON'S ENGLISH COACH. 



Gathering of the Storm, i6i 

of his own character. A time was 
drawing near which was to test his 
piety. This was to prove, through 
long, dark hours, the chief support 
and solace of the soldier. But the 
young life for which he pleaded was 
doomed. His adopted daughter ex- 
pired on the 9th of June, 1773. 

Outside of that mourning home events 
marched rapidly. The proscribed tea- 
chests lay piled in the storehouses of 
the East India Company. Lord North 
now removed the export tax, sup- 
posing, with his usual fatuity in all 
that concerned the colonies, that the 
low price of the tea would at once se- 
cure large sales. He had not the faint- 
est idea of the wide-spread indignation 
which his tyranny had aroused. The 

company sent its teas to America, and 
II 



1 62 Life of George Washington, 

we all know how the cargoes came to 
grief on that i8th of December, 1773, 
when the ships lay at anchor In Boston 
Harbor. 

Matters had now reached a crisis. 
Boston was, at this time, the most flour- 
Ishlnor commercial town on the conti- 

o 

nent. Its inhabitants had, from the 
beginning, been foremost in asserting 
their independence, and Insisting on the 
sacred rights of freemen. The Parlia- 
ment, therefore, regarded the little town 
by the sea as the *' hotbed of sedition." 
When tidings of the destruction of the 
tea cargoes reached England, the 
enraged government resolved that a 
signal example should be made of Bos- 
ton. 

On the loth of May, 1774, the act 
for closing the port reached the town. 



Gathering of the Storm, 163 

This was a memorable day in the history 
of two worlds. It was on that day that 
Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette as- 
cended the throne of France. The 
young sovereigns, when they first learned 
of the death of the old king, had fallen 
on their knees, exclaiming, '' O, God, 
we are too young to reign ! " 

No shadow of the o^uillotine loomed 
darkly through the rejoicings of those 
May days ; no thought of the devoted 
little town on the far western coast, on 
which England's bolt had fallen so heav- 
ily, entered the thought of monarch or 
courtier, amid the grand inaugurals of the 
new reign. The simple facts of history 
are often more incredible than the wild- 
est romance. Time was to prove that 
the Boston Port Bill and the fall of the 
Bourbons had an intimate connection. 



164 Life of George Washington, 

The bill which closed the port of Bos- 
ton, and thus doomed to destruction the 
most flourishing commercial town on the 
continent, roused America. Each colony 
regarded the blow as aimed at itself. 
The letter, containing tidings of the bill, 
was read in the Virginia House of Bur- 
gesses. All business was suspended. 
A protest was made, and the ist of 
June — the day on which Boston was to 
be blockaded at noon — set apart as a 
day of humiliation, fasting, and prayer. 

The next morning, when the Bur- 
gesses re-assembled. Lord Dunmore, the 
governor of the colony, dissolved the 
House. The members immediately re- 
paired to the old Raleigh Tavern, only 
a few paces from the Capitol. Under the 
old historic roof various memorable res- 
olutions were passed. But the one 



Gathering of the Storm. 165 

which proposed that the deputies of 
the colonies should meet annually in 
General Congress overshadows in im- 
portance every other. 

On the 1st of June, 1774, Washing- 
ton, as his diary states, " fasted rigor- 
ously and attended the services of his 
church." It was the day when the 
British vessels of war rode Mp at noon 
and blockaded the port. The Virginia 
gentleman who that day was fasting for 
Boston, was to prove a little later that 
he could also fight for her. 

The progress of events only confirmed 
the worst fears of every lover of his 
country. It was evident that T^ngland 
was bent, on crushing the liberties of 
America. But while, during the sum- 
mer, the busy wharves of Boston grew 
silent under tlie black shadow of the 



1 66 Life of George Washington. 

war-ships, and ruin crept slowly along 
the quaint, narrow streets that, a little 
while before, had been humming with life 
and prosperity, a new spirit was awak- 
ening throughout the land — a spirit that 
was destined to sweep everything before 
it. No man could, of course, forecast 
the hour of the Revolution, or discern 
what form' it would take at the begin- 
ning. But the approach of that mighty 
storm which was to rend two nations 
apart, was felt in the air during all the 
summer of 1774 — the last peaceful one 
which America was to know for years. 

A new mood was coming over the 
people who inhabited the Atlantic sea- 
board of America — the mood which 
makes heroes of the men it possesses. 
The country did not want leaders at 
this time. The wisest heads and the 



Gathering of the Storm. 167 

truest hearts of the nation came to her 
aid. Frequent meetings gave expression 
to the feehng of common danger, to the 
sense of common duty. Fresh meas- 
ures of coercion and oppression only 
added fresh fuel to the popular resent- 
ment. The question at issue between 
England and America was fast becom- 
inpf a life and death one to the colo- 
nists. Freedom and slavery hung in 
the balance for them and their pos- 
terity. 

Washington was in the thick of affairs 
that summer. His position in his own 
county, the weight of his character and 
his word, made his example of immense 
consequence at this crisis. The meet- 
ings and conventions at which he was 
chairman prove, as all his speeches and 
letters do, his ardent sympathy with the 



1 68 Life of George Washington, 

popular cause. When the hour of trial 
came, nobody could doubt where It would 
find him. 

Yet his calm, sagacious mind could 
not deceive him as to the tremendous 
odds against his country, if it ever came 
to a war with England. Could America, 
he must often have questioned, send out 
her half-trained yeomen and militia to 
do battle with the most powerful foe in 
the world ? The armies of Great Brit- 
ain were flushed with the maofnificent 
victories they had recently won under 
the administration of Pitt. Washineton 
knew perfectly the scorn with which 
those seasoned veterans would regard 
the raw levies of the provinces. But 
the Old French War had been a rare 
training-school for the colonial soldiers. 
It had shown them the strength and 



GatheiHitg of the Stor7n, 169 

resources of their country; the weak 
points in the army of any enemy who 
should meet them on their native soil. 
Washington, too, had an unfaltering- 
conviction of the right of his cause. It 
was this conviction which lit up these 
hours of doubt and anxiety with hope 
and courage. He knew it was not the 
part of a patriot to despair, so long as 
there was a country to be defended, a 
God of battles to appeal to. 

Washington had been appointed a 
delegate to the General Congress 
which had been agreed on in the old 
Raleigh Tavern, on the day when 
Lord Dunmore dissolved the House of 
Burgesses. The congress met, the 
^ 5th of September, in Carpenter's Hall, 
in Philadelphia. The meeting was held 
with closed doors. It was the most mo- 



i7o Life of George Washington, 

mentous assembly that had ever gath- 
ered on the Western Continent. An 
eloquent writer says of this congress : 
** The most eloquent men of the various 
colonies were now for the first time 
brought together. They were known to 
each other by fame, but were personally 
strangers. The object which had called 
them together was of incalculable mag- 
nitude. The happiness of no less than 
three millions of people, with that of all 
their posterity, was staked on the wis- 
dom and energy of their councils." 

The session of that first congress 
lasted fifty-one days. No record of the 
speeches exists. But all the great ques- 
tions which had brouo[-ht them too^ether 
were discussed by men who realized the 
tremendous interests with which they 
had been charged. The Stamp Act, the 



Gathering of the Storm. 171 

Tea Tax, the Act for Quartering Troops, 
the Boston Port Bill, and various other 
illegal and oppressive measures of Great 
Britain came up for discussion and con- 
demnation before an assembly com- 
posed of the wisest brains and noblest 
hearts in America. *'To these grievous 
acts and measures," solemnly declared the 
small body of men in the old hall of the 
Quaker town, "America cannot submit.'* 

The spirit of their resolutions breathed 
the temper of patriots and freemen. But 
the members proved that the old loyal 
feeling was not extinct, by a motion "to 
prepare a loyal address to his majesty." 

That first Congress did its great work 
and closed. In the shortening autumn 
days Washington rode down to Mount 
Vernon. His heart must have been 
heavy. The scenes in which he had 



172 Life of George Washington, 

just been an actor had aroused all his 
deep patriotism. His own future and 
that of his country must have loomed 
darkly before him. There was every 
reason now to believe that England was 
bent on driving her colonies to desper- 
ation. In that case, Washington had 
long settled with himself what supreme 
call he must obey. Yet the thought of 
leaving his beloved home, and the wife 
whose heart had been so lately torn with 
grief, must have cost him many a cruel 
moment. 

During the winter that followed, one 
feeling and one purpose gained strength 
throughout the country. Military meas- 
ures — hitherto confined to New England 
— were rapidly adopted by all the 
colonies. While the men-of-war rode 
in Boston Harbor, and General Gage, 



Gathering of the Storm, 173 

with his British veterans, encamped on 
the Common, the drum-beat, that herald 
of war, began to be heard in the mid- 
dle and southern provinces. Virginia 
was not backward. Independent com- 
panies were formed on her soil, and 
their officers constantly repaired to 
Washington for military instruction. 
The old, peaceful days had passed for 
Mount Vernon. A silence had settled 
upon gay Belvoir, for its proprietor had 
returned to England — a gloom had 
gathered over Mount Vernon. As 
Washington wandered among the an- 
cient woodlands that winter, the winds 
that moaned among the leafless 
branches must have had a mournful 
prophecy to his ear and heart. But 
that season was too full of varied activ- 
ities and demands to afford much time 



174 L^f^ ^f George Washington, 

for solitary reflection. He was often 
absent from home — summoned away to 
musters and reviews. Mount Vernon 
itself began to assume a military aspect 
as the companies met there to drill. 
All this must have seemed a good deal 
like the old fencing days of Washing- 
ton's youth. 

The congress, in its petition to 
George III., had solemnly reminded 
him, that "from our sovereign there 
can be but one appeal." Deeds, when 
the worst came, would be sure to fol- 
low such words. But all prayers and 
warnings were disregarded. Contempt 
for the character of the colonists, and 
a fatal ignorance of their temper, pre- 
vailed in English counsels ; and the 
obstinate king and the subservient 
minister went their own blind way. 



CHAPTER XL 

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 

Nobody could, of course, foresee, in 
those days which immediately preceded 
the opening of the Revolution, where 
the storm would burst. Yet nobody 
was, perhaps, surprised that it first 
broke in New England. Every child 
can repeat the date of the pleasant 
April morning when '' the shot was 
fired that was heard round the world ; " 
and the long seven years' drama of the 
Revolution opened with the firing at 
Lexington and the fight at Concord. 

The news of that fight shook the 
continent like an earthquake. As 



176 Life of George Washington, 

breathless couriers carried the tale 
through the land, the popular feeling, 
like a mounting wave, swept every col- 
ony into the Revolution. When the 
news reached Virginia, a cry rang 
through the ancient province, that 
her liberties, like Massachusetts', were 
doomed! There was a general spring- 
ing to arms. All eyes were now turned 
to Washington. He was everywhere 
regarded as the one best fitted to take 
command of the American forces. 

Three weeks after the battle of Con- 
cord the second General Congress met 
in Philadelphia. Some of its members 
still shrank from severing the last bond 
which united them with Great Britain ; 
and, even at that late hour, voices 
pleaded that a final petition should be 
sent to the government. It is a signifi- 




WHITE HOUSE. 



The ATnerican Revohition. 177 

cant fact that Washington approved of 
this motion. 

But the ''humble and dutiful petition 
to the king" encountered eloquent op- 
position. It was felt that the hour for 
appeals had passed, and that the one 
for action had come. John Adams, 
the delegate from Massachusetts, whose 
voice had been so powerful in the first 
congress, now strongly opposed any 
further attempt at reconciliation, and it 
was at last abandoned as hopeless. 

A League was now formed, which, 
among other powers, vested in Congress 
the right to declare war or peace. 
When Georofla — doubtful for awhile — 
joined the confederacy it extended from 
Nova Scotia to Florida. 

That small body of delegates assem- 
bled in the old Quaker City on the 
12 



178 Life of George Washington, 

threshold of the summer of 1775 had 
an almost superhuman task laid upon 
them. After the formation of the 
League, which virtually constituted a 
nation, the first question that faced it 
was the raising and equipping an 
army. 

It must have been a breathless mo- 
ment when John Adams rose in the 
Congress, and moved that George 
Washington, of Virginia, be appointed 
Commander-in-Chief of the Colonial 
Forces. When his name was brought 
to the front, Washington sprang up 
and darted into the library. The 
old modesty, which, when he was a 
young member of the Virginia House 
of Burofesses, left him standinof blushinof 
and speechless among his peers, had 
not been overcome by sixteen years of 



The American Revolution. 179 

public life. In a few days, however, 
the appointment was made. Washing- 
ton's sense of what he owed his coun- 
try would not admit of his declining it. 
But in the solemn moment of accepting 
those vast, untried responsibilities, he 
said a few words as sincere as his own 
character : " I beg it may be remem- 
bered by every gentleman in the room 
that I this day declare, with the ut- 
most sincerity, I do not think myself 
equal to the command I am honored 
with." 

It was characteristic of him, too, that 
he absolutely declined to accept any 
salary for his services. 

It is doubtful whether, at the open- 
ing of the Revolution, any man made so 
great sacrifices as George Washington. 
To realize their extent, it must be re- 



i8o L^fc^ of Geo7'ge Washmgton, 

membered that he left a paradise behind 
him when he went from Mount Vernon. 
The fiery spirit of his youth had long 
been laid to rest. The thick of the bat- 
tle had no charms for him now. He 
had no military ambitions to gratify, no 
personal interests to serve. The ques- 
tions at issue between England and 
America did not vitally affect his own 
fortunes. He had every reason to be- 
lieve, had he continued loyal to the 
government, that the happy, prosperous 
years of the past might still stretch far 
into his future. His calm and reasona- 
ble mind could never be the victim of 
illusions. He must have foreseen all 
the possibilities of defeat. In those 
sterner times, he knew what fate might 
await the leader of rebel armies. He 
would not hide from himself the 



The American Revolution. i8i 

chances of the prisoner's doom or the 
traitor's death. 

At the awful moment when he looked 
these things in the face, George Wash- 
ington must speak for himself. *' It is 
my full intention, if needful," he wrote 
to his brother, *'to devote life and fort- 
une to the cause." 

At this time his deepest solicitude 
was for the wife whom he would leave 
lonely and anxious at Mount Ver- 
non. The letter of manly tenderness 
which he wrote her on setting out for 
the camp was one certain to appeal to 
the heart and mind of a high-souled 
woman. In that letter something of the 
fervor of a young lover mingled with the 
solemn temper of the hero. 

He had previously taken every care 
for his mother. He had removed her 



1 82 Life of George Washington. 

from her country home to Fredericks- 
burg, where she could remain In the 
vicinity of friends, and yet be remote 
from danger. The small dwelling of 
one upright story, where the mother of 
the deliverer of his country passed the 
remainder of her days, stood on one of 
the great northern and southern high- 
ways. Couriers constantly passed that 
simple home. One would bring news of 
glorious triumphs, and another would 
follow with stories of loss and disaster. 
But the mother of Washington preserved 
through all changes of fortune the digni- 
fied serenity so characteristic of her. 

The Commander-in-Chief received his 
commission on the 20th of June, 1775. 
The day after, he set out from Philadel- 
phia for the army. 

Less than twenty miles from the city, 



The American Revolution, 183 

a courier, spurring in hot haste, met the 
brilHant little cavalcade that was escort- 
in or Washinofton throuofh the State, with 
tidinofs of the Battle of Bunker Hill. 
The general's first eager question, 
** How did the militia stand fire?" 
shows the secret anxiety which the sol- 
dier had carried all this time. He 
knew that the raw New England levies 
had undergone a terrible test. They 
had met the British veterans in fair 
fio^ht for the first time. 

After hearinof the courier's account of 
the fight, he exclaimed, ''The liberties 
of the country are safe ! " 

One seems almost to hear that tone 
of confident exultation ringing down 
through more than a century. 

Those about the general remarked 
that a weight of doubt and anxiety 



184 Life of George Washington, 

seemed to have been lifted from his 
soul. 

On the 3d of July, George Washing- 
ton took command of the armies at 
Cambridge — a command which he de- 
voutly hoped would close with the next 
autumn, but which he was destined to 
hold for the next eight years. 

The shouts of the soldiers assembled 
to welcome him, and the thunders of 
artillery, first gave warning to the en- 
emy, besieged in Boston, that the 
Commander-in-Chief of the American 
Forces — or, as they would have con- 
temptuously termed them, the muster 
of rebels — was in camp. 

The tall figure, the noble face, the 
dignified presence of the stately Vir- 
ginian, must have been a sight never to 
be forgotten by the spectators, as he 



The American Revolution, 185 

wheeled his horse and drew his sword 
under that elm whose ancient branches 
still battle with the winter storms, and 
grow green with the May. Every eye 
in the camp, and among the vast throng 
which had crowded into Cambridore, 
gazed with awed admiration on the new 
general. He was in the prime of his 
manhood — forty-three at that time — and 
just the ideal of a soldier in looks and 
bearing. All who met Washington con- 
cur in ascribing to him a singular maj- 
esty of presence. It impressed those 
who had been all their lives familiar 
with courts. Lafayette, before his intro- 
duction, instantly distinguished Washing- 
ton amid the group of American officers 
about him. 

A strange scene met the eyes of the 
new Commander-in-Chief that July morn- 



i86 Life of George Washington. 

ing. He was not familiar with New 
Enorland life and habits. He had been 
brought up in an atmosphere of social 
amenities and refinements. His own 
temperament inclined him to a careful 
observance of these. Something that 
was noblest and finest in the old cava- 
liers of his race was in their descend- 
ant, who, that morning at Cambridge, 
gazed astonished on the rude encamp- 
ment of yeomanry. For he knew those 
rustic, undisciplined, ill-appointed troops 
had just matched their strength with 
the proudest army and navy of the 
world. 



CHAPTER XII.' 

THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF. 

No general of ancient or modern 
times was probably ever more amazed 
than was George Washington at sight 
of the forces of which he had taken 
command. The men had left their 
plows, seized their firelocks, and 
marched to the scene of action at the 
call of their country. The tents must 
have been a sight for laughter and 
tears. They were made of sail-cloth or 
stone, of birches or boards, of turf or 
brush, as suited the resources and 
tastes of the occupants. The soldiers 
were destitute of arms, uniforms, stores 
— every equipment that an army re- 



1 88 Life of George Washington, 

quires. They had very Imperfect Ideas 
of military order, and were liable to 
strongly resent any attempt to exer- 
cise necessary discipline. They were 
bound together by a common love of 
their country, a common sense of her 
wrongs, and by the wrath of freemen 
against the proud and powerful foe who 
was bent on destroying their liberties. 

In this temper of the yeoman soldiery 
lay the strength of the army, the hope 
of America. The hearts that throbbed 
under those homespun coats burned 
with an undying patriotism ; the hands, 
brown as the furrows they had been 
tilling, were eager to cross swords 
again with the enemy that held com- 
mand of Boston, and rode in insolent 
triumph in the harbor. 

The ride which Washington took that 



The Commander-in-Chief, 189 

summer morning along the American 
lines, stretching weak and irregular 
from Winter Hill to Dorchester Neck, 
was not calculated to inspire the new 
chief with more sanguine hopes than 
the sight of the encampment at Cam- 
bridge. That first day of command 
must have occasioned him the keenest 
disappointment. The numbers and 
equipment of the American forces had 
been greatly exaggerated to him. 

At the summit of Prospect Hill 
Washington drew rein, and gazed on 
the British encampment that lay before 
him. He saw the flag to whose service 
he had given the pride and strength of 
his youth. The folds floated in triumph 
from the summit of Bunker Hill, and 
from the ships-of-the-line in the harbor. 
He must have recalled the day — now 



190 Life of George Washington. 

more than sixteen years ago — when he 
planted that standard on the smoking 
ruins of Fort Duquesne. Under that 
flag now lay an army perfectly equipped 
and admirably disciplined. Under him 
was assembled a motley force of about 
fourteen thousand levies, full of the 
high, free spirit they had brought from 
their native hills, and quite ready to 
rebel or desert at any attempt to main- 
tain military discipline. 

As Washington gazed once more on 
the wide-mouthed chimneys and steep- 
roofed houses of Boston, he must have 
recalled, too, that time when, with his 
gay young companions, he clattered 
into the narrow streets of the humming 
little seaport. Those bustling streets 
were silent now. The piers were rot- 
ting about the wharves that had been 



The Commander-in-Chief, 191 

so full of varied, busy life. England 
had set her iron heel on all the activ- 
ity and industry of the old days. 

The British had taken possession of 
Boston to find themselves blockaded 
there by the American forces. These 
were distributed in a long, semicircular 
line, extending eight or nine miles. 
The farthest northern post lay at Win- 
ter Hill; the most southern, at Roxbury 
and Dorchester Neck. 

As Washington made his first survey 
that summer morning ; as his keenly 
observant eyes took in the weak points 
in the long, straggling American lines, 
he must have been astonished that such 
an army could hold Gage and his vet- 
erans blockaded in Boston for a day. 

The first care of the general was, of 
course, to improve and strengthen the 



192 Life of George Washington. 

defenses of the camp. The whole army 
soon gave evidence of a vigorous and 
efficient command. As soon as the 
main forts were strengthened by addi- 
tional works, and something like mili- 
tary order was established, Washington 
grew eager to draw the enemy out of 
Boston. He longed to bring his yeo- 
man soldiery once more face to face 
with Gage's seasoned troops ; but the en- 
emy did not venture on an engagement. 

The summer, the autumn, the winter 
— with more than the usual rigor of a 
New England winter — wore away, and 
still the long, blockading cordon kept 
the British closely imprisoned in Bos- 
ton. The town, unable to break 
through the besieging lines and obtain 
supplies from the country around, be- 
gan to suffer severely. 



The Commander-in-Chief. 193 

That winter was full of new anxieties, 
vexations, and trials for Washington. 
There were times, during those first 
months of command, when he bitterly 
regretted having assumed it. It is not 
singular that, amid such untried circum- 
stances and responsibilities, even his 
patience sometimes gave out. One of 
his deepest annoyances was the general 
insubordination of the troops. Washing- 
ton at first misunderstood the tempera- 
ment and character of the New Enofland 
soldier. The latter's native independ- 
ence, his openly expressed contempt for 
rules and forms, shocked one who, by 
nature and education, had a profound 
regard for military rank and etiquette. 
It took some time, and some bitter ex- 
perience, for the General and the troops 

under him to learn and appreciate the 

13 



194 L^f^ of George Washington, 

sterling qualities, the splendid staying 
power, of each other. 

As one reads the history of those 
months, they seem more incredible than 
the wildest romance. Mistake and inef- 
ficiency, delay and parsimony, In every 
department of service, filled the prompt, 
fiery spirited commander with amaze- 
ment and disQfust. Under his almost 
perfect self-command burned a fierce 
temper. He scorned petty characters 
and dealings, and It was at first difficult 
for him to make due consideration for 
ideas, habits, practices, which formed 
the antithesis of his own. 

Washlno^ton's discouraofements must 
have seemed to culminate on the day 
that he learned there were but thirty- 
two barrels of powder in camp. With 
this amount of ammunition he was actu- 



The Commander-in- Chief, 1 9 5 

ally besieging the British army in Bos- 
ton ! At the time of his taking the 
command, the Committee of Supplies 
had made a return of three hundred 
barrels. This instance affords a per- 
fect illustration of the careless manage- 
ment of military affairs, which so se- 
verely tried Washington's soul at that 
period. He lost no time in obtain- 
ing fresh supplies. Happily, the enemy 
made no sortie at this critical mo- 
ment. Washington dispatched agents to 
all quarters for lead and powder. No 
quantity, however small, was to be re- 
jected when the need was so imminent. 
After immense exertions the American 
camp was supplied with fresh ammunition. 
In November Mrs. Washington joined 
her husband at the headquarters which 
had been provided for him in Cam- 



196 Life of George Washington, 

bridge. She had made the long jour- 
ney from Mount Vernon in her own 
private carriage. There had been more 
or less fear that the beautiful home of 
the General of the rebel armies would 
be marked out as an especial object of 
British vengeance. Mrs. Washington, 
however, had not shared this alarm, and 
had declined the guard which * her 
friends had offered when they advised 
her to flee for safety. Washington him- 
self did not believe she was in any 
peril ; but he urged her to come to 
him ; and, as we read of her long, slow 
journey, with the escorts and guards 
of honor, and the ceremonious recep- 
tions that awaited her along the route, 
we are reminded of the splendid prog- 
ress of queens, in ancient times, through 
their dominions. 



The Commander-m- Chief. 197 

The presence of Mrs. Washington at 
headquarters was a great relief to her 
husband. Petty rivalries and jealousies 
there had already added to his discom- 
fort. His wife presided in her new 
sphere with her usual grace and dig- 
nity, and gave to the ancient Cam- 
bridore mansion somethinor of the home 
atmosphere of Mount Vernon. 

During the whole of that winter the 
wonder was — a wonder which has never 
been fully explained — why the enemy, 
the very flower of the British army, did 
not sally in force from the town, break 
through the weak besieging lines, and 
carry defeat and dismay into the ranks 
of the rebels. 

But all those months the war-ships 
rode in the harbor, the tramp of the 
red-coats echoed throuofh the narrow 



iqB Life of George Washington. 

streets, shaded by the gabled, steep- 
roofed houses, and the militia still held 
their lines unbroken from Winter Hill 
to Dorchester Neck. 

We all know how the monotony of 
the siege was broken up at last. On 
that cold March night of 1776, when 
Washington intrenched himself at Dor- 
Chester Heights, he held the city of 
Boston in his power. On the 17th the 
memorable embarkation took place, and 
the last sail of the British fleet disap- 
peared from Boston Harbor. 

The next day, with drums beating 
and colors flying, and amid the joyful 
welcomes of the people, Washington 
entered the town he had delivered from 
its enemies. The American General had 
won his first victory. 

It does not fall within the compass of 



The Commander-in-Chief. 199 

this brief biography to tell the long 
story of the Revolution. Many eloquent 
pens have written of the Siege of Bos- 
ton, of the masterly retreat from Long 
Island, of the late escape at the critical 
moment from Nev/ York, of the weary 
winter marchings through the Jerseys, of 
the midnight crossing of the Delaware, 
of the victories of Trenton and Prince- 
ton, of the huts at Morristown and the 
unutterable miseries of Valley Forge, of 
the defeats of Brandywine and Ger- 
mantown, until all these were crowned 
at last with the splendid success and 
the final surrender before the allied 
armies at Yorktown. Each one of these 
scenes forms a thrilling drama. Many 
of them live, not only in the pages of 
history, but in the ballads of the poet 
and on the canvas of the painter. 



200 Life of George Washington, 

The War of the Revolution was, from 
the beginning, a war of defense. It was 
in the very nature of things that it 
should be so. It afforded comparatively 
few opportunities for brilliant deeds, and 
for those sudden displays of great mili- 
tary genius which dazzle the imagina- 
tion, and make the world hold its breath. 
The ''American Fabias " was not a title 
which Bonaparte would have coveted. 
We know with what contempt he spoke 
of the Revolution to Lafayette. But the 
man who had the power to wait, knew, 
and was always ready when the hour 
came for him to strike. '• It is simply 
unfair,'' says one of his biographers, 
"to compare Washington with those 
great generals who figure in the pages 
of history, and who have won their fame 
at the head of vast armies of veteran 



The Commander-in-Chief, 201 

troops furnished with boundless supplies. 
Those generals did not have an army 
to create out of raw militia. They did 
not have an empty treasury, an un- 
housed, half-fed, half-clothed soldiery. 
They did not have to write, as he did. 
In *one dark moment of the disastrous 
campaign of 1776, that ''five hundred dol- 
lars would be of immense service to him." 
With veteran generals, with the flower 
of Hessian and British troops arrayed 
against him, he had also to contend 
with or silently endure the jealousies 
and underminings of his subordinates, 
the perpetual interference of Congress 
with his military plans, and the igno- 
rance, incapacity, and obstinacy of those 
to whom he was obliofed to confide the 
execution of his orders at most critical 
moments. 



202 Life of George Washington. 

Between the morning fight at Concord 
and the evacuation of New York by the 
British troops, November 25, 1783 — the 
last scene of the war — lay almost nine 
years. No doubt it seemed more than 
all the rest of their lives to our ances- 
tors. A few days after the last scarlet 
uniform had disappeared from the soil, a 
scene occurred to which the pen of no 
historian can do justice. Washington 
took leave of his officers in the old 
New York Tavern, near the ferry, 
where a barge waited to convey him 
across the Hudson to Paulus Hook. 
That last interview, with all that it 
meant, and all the memories that 
crowded about the hour, overcame even 
the great self-command of Washington. 
He broke down like a child. He gazed 
through blinding tears on the faces of 



The Commander-in-Chief, 203 

the men who had shared with him un- 
speakable toils, hardships, and perils. 
As each officer approached, he silently 
kissed the brown, bearded face with 
more than a brother's tenderness. 

Not a word was spoken. The officers 
followed that beloved, stately figure as 
it passed on foot through a corps of 
light infantry to the ferry. When he 
arrived there, Washington entered the 
barge, removed his hat, and waved a 
silent adieu. It requires very little effort 
of imagination to see the tall figure 
standing there, the grave, benignant 
face, the' gray hair waving in the au- 
tumn wind, and the dark barge moving 
slowly away over the Hudson. 

On the summer morning when he 
took command of the American army 
under the elm at Cambridge, Washing- 



204 Life of George Washington, 

ton was in the prime of his years. But 
the eight that followed had told heavily 
on his great strength. There is some- 
thing very touching in the manner with 
which he apologized to the soldiers at 
Newburg for using glasses, when he was 
compelled to read a document in their 
presence. " I am getting to be an old 
man," he said. This was, it appears, 
the way in which he began to regard 
himself, though he had not, in reality, 
yet crossed his fifty-second birthday. 

. Nineteen days after the Commander- 
in-Chief had parted with his officers in 
New York, another memorable scene 
took place. This was at Annapolis, 
when, with a few simple and noble 
words, Washington surrendered his com- 
mand to Congress, and asked permission 
to retire from the service of his country. 



The Commander-in-Chief. 205 

A large audience witnessed that event 
with breathless interest. The President 
of Congress, who accepted the resigna- 
tion, closed his address with a prophecy: 
"■ The glory of your virtues will descend 
to remotest generations ! " 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE PEACE. 

The next day Washington started for 
his beloved Mount Vernon. He reached 
it that niofht. It was Christmas Eve. 
Perhaps all that had gone before did 
not seem too heavy a price to pay for 
the rest and joy with which he kept the 
ancient holiday under his own roof-tree ; 
while he thought how a free nation, for 
the first time, could keep the festival 
with him. 

He took up the old life with the old 
zest. The highest ambition of the man 
who had won the liberties of America 
was, to use his own grandly simple 



The Peace. 207 

[ 

f 

words, ''to be a farmer and live an 
honest man." 

He resumed his old ways of living, 
although, during the winter of unusual 
rigor which followed his return, he was 
literally ''snow-bound" at Mount Ver- 
non. His military habits still clung to 
him, and on awakening in the morning 
he would find himself listeninof for the 
reveille of the camp. But with the re- 
turn of spring he was engrossed with 
the management of his estate. This 
demanded all his time and energies, as 
Mount Vernon showed, in almost every 
department, the long absence of its 
proprietor. Washington set himself at 
work to repair the injuries his domain 
had undergone, to improve the buildings, 
and to beautify the grounds. He had 
great enjoyment in laying these out 



2o8 Life of George Washington. 

with ornamental shrubs and hedges, in 
traihng ivies, and planting holly bushes. 
He also had much delight in setting 
out trees, of which he was almost as 
great a lover — in a different way — as 
Wordsworth. 

The days seem to wear again the 
idyllic charm of his youth. He could 
not have felt that he was an old man, as he 
rode in the mornings, still full of health 
and vigor, about Mount Vernon. 

But he had to pay the price of his 
fame. The world would not leave the 
deliverer of America alone in his con- 
genial retirement. A constant stream 
of guests now flowed to his door. 
They consumed his time and were a 
heavy tax on his resources, which had 
been seriously strained during the war. 
Washington's guests met with the sim- 



The Peace, 209 

pie, dignified courtesy characteristic of 
their host. Yet there is a touch of his 
native shrewd humor in his manner 
of alludinor to those who now crowded 
his board. "They say," he writes, 
'* they come out of respect to me. 
Would not the word curiosity do as 
well ? " 

During the three years which fol- 
lowed the close of the Revolution — 
years which Washington spent under 
his own roof — he was not free from 
anxieties. His most earnest thought 
was still for his country. In his retire- 
ment he watched the progress of her 
affairs with profound solicitude. There 
was much in the condition of America 
to give him intense anxiety. The 
young nation had entered on an ex- 
periment so vast that her wisest states- 
14 



2IO Life of George Washington, 

men might well recoil at the task be- 
fore them. Everything was tentative in 
the organization and policy of the new 
government. The "Thirteen States" 
were no longer bound together by the 
pressure of a common peril. The tie 
that had held them in war proved too 
feeble for peace. The Confederacy 
framed by the second congress, and 
from which so much was hoped for 
America and for humanity, proved, in 
its practical workings, a failure. 

This became so apparent at last, and 
the condition of affairs grew so disas- 
trous, that it became evident that the 
only salvation of the country was in a 
change of government. A convention, 
composed of delegates from all. the 
States, was summoned to meet in Phil- 
adelphia. To that famous convention 



The Peace. 2 1 1 

the United States of America owe their 
Constitution. 

The greatest man in the nation would 
be certain to be required at this crisis. 
Every eye was turned to Mount Ver- 
non. Virginia placed him at the head 
of the delecrates whom she sent to the 
convention. Washington accepted the 
nomination with extreme reluctance, but 
the dangers of the time left him no 
choice. He repaired to Philadelphia, to 
find himself once more in the thick of 
public life. On the first sitting of the 
convention, May 25, 1788, he was 
unanimously appointed president. 

The long, memorable summer passed 
away. Washington's presence and in- 
fluence were, no doubt, a controlling 
power in all the measures of that con- 
vention. In September the great work 



212 Life of George Washington. 

was finished, and the Constitution was 
ofiven to the world. 

The course of affairs now only per- 
mitted him a brief return to his home. 
In the following spring he was elected 
President of the United States. 

That high office had no attractions 
for him ; but his friends spared no 
argument or entreaties to induce him 
to accept it. Their appeals to his sense 
of duty were at last crowned with suc- 
cess, and he took on his waxing years 
and waning strength the heavy burden 
which inhered in the title. 

Before he set out for New York, then 
the seat of government, he visited his 
mother in her simple home at Freder- 
icksburg. The meeting must have been 
full of tender, solemn feeling for both. 
She was very proud of her illustrious 



The Peace. 213 

son, but she never manifested any ela- 
tion over his success. She was an in- 
vaHd af the time, and that meeting 
proved their last one. 

Washington's journey to New York 
was like the progress of a beloved sov- 
ereign throuofh his dominions. Wher- 
ever he appeared the bells rang, the 
cannon roared, and crowds thronged 
the highways with welcoming huzzas. 

But no scene in the eventful journey 
made so deep an impression as the one 
at Trenton, where the historic ** tri- 
umphal arch " spanned the bridge. It 
was a sunny afternoon when Washing- 
ton, on the way to his inauguration, 
reached the banks of the Delaware. 
The terrible night, twelve years before, 
when, in the darkest moment of his 
country's fortunes, he crossed the river 



214 Life of George Washington. 

amid the bitter cold, the blinding snow, 
the drifting ice, must have risen before 
him. And now crowds of fair women 
had gathered in the pleasant April 
afternoon, to honor the Father of his 
Country. Young girls, dressed in 
white, and lovely as the garlands that 
crowned them, strewed flowers and sang 
-^TH^g^ before him. Those two scenes 
on the Delaware — the wild, black mid- 
night, with its storming winds and 
blinding snows, and the smiling spring 
day, with the shouting crowds and the 
joyous, flower-decked maidens — must 
have hung forever afterward, cornpanion 
pieces, in his memory. 

The inauguration took place in New 
York on the last day of April, 1789. 
Nothing of the kind had ever occurred 
in America. The scene was one of 



The Peace, 215 

breathless Interest to the vast crowds 
who witnessed It. It was a solemn mo- 
ment for the country, when her victori- 
ous general, who, at the close of the 
war, had, with stern Indignation, refused 
the crown his army was eager to place 
on his head, came out on the balcony, 
laid his hand, on the Bible and took his 
oath of office. 

Streets and windows and roofs of 
houses were crowded with spectators. 
Washington wore, the chronicles tell us, 
" a full suit of dark brown cloth of 
American manufacture, with a steel- 
hllted dress-sword, white silk stockings, 
and silver shoe-buckles." As we read 
this, we are reminded that it all hap- 
pened a hundred years ago. When the 
oath was spoken, the folds of a flag 
suddenly floated from the great cupola. 



2i6 Life of George Waslmigton. 

At that signal, the artillery thundered 
from the battery, and George Wash- 
ington was President of the United 
States. 

The great soldier had now entered 
upon a new field. It remained to be 
proved whether those qualities which 
had shone so conspicuous in the camp, 
would be equally successful in the cabi- 
net. Difficulties surrounded the new 
President. A system of government 
was on its trial. Washington had no 
precedents, no traditions, to guide him. 
The new Constitution had encountered 
the most vehement opposition, and some 
of the States had reluctantly, and with 
very small majorities, consented to ac- 
cept it. 




THE. SWORD AND 
THE STAFF. 




WASHINGTON'S G(JLD WATCH. 




Washington's last 

WATCH SEAL. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED 
STATES. 

All sorts of new duties and relations 
pressed upon the President. Not the 
smallest of these were the social ones. 
At the beginning, as was to be ex- 
pected, crowds of company made terri- 
ble inroads upon the precious time 
which was needed for public affairs. 

The arrival of Mrs. Washlnorton was 

o 

a great relief at this juncture. She 
came to share the honors and cares of 
her husband's new position, as she had 
gone before to the hardships of the 
camp, to the miseries of Valley Forge. 



2i8 Life of George Washington, 

She used often to say that ** It had 
been her fortune to hear the first can- 
non at the opening, and the last at the 
closing, of the campaign." 

The position on which she entered 
now as the first lady of the nation, as 
the representative of American woman- 
hood, was a wholly novel one, and must 
have had many trials and embarrass- 
ments for the wife of our first Presi- 
dent. It Is not unlikely that she some- 
times sighed, amid her new dignities, for 
the old rough camp times, with all their 
limitations and makeshifts. There is 
somethlnof slofnificant in her habit of 
alluding to her days of public ceremo- 
nials as '' lost days." 

But Martha Washington was equal to 
the occasion, whether that summoned 
her to the soldier's hut or the Presi- 



The First President, 219 

dent's home. Some simple, noble words 
which she wrote in New York, in the 
winter of 1 789, deserve a place here. 
There is the ring of a true woman's 
feeling in every line: 

** I am still determined to be cheerful 
and happy in whatever situation I may 
be ; for I have also learned from expe- 
rience that the greater part of our hap- 
piness or misery depends on our dispo- 
sitions and not on our circumstances. 
We carry the seeds of the one or the 
other about with us, wherever we go." 

The wife who could write such words, 
and live them, must have been a source 
of unspeakable strength and comfort to 
her husband amid all his various public 
service, at the head of armies or as the 
chief of the nation. 

It is not surprising that a great habit 



2 20 Life of George Washington, 

of absent-mindedness grew upon Wash- 
ington. He was not always aware when 
his wife addressed him. A little story- 
has survived, which happily illustrates 
their domestic relations. When the wife 
found her husband in one of his fits of 
abstraction, and wished to arrest his at- 
tention, it became her habit to take 
hold of one of his coat buttons. This 
action never failed to arouse him. He 
would stand still, giving her his undi- 
vided attention, a pleased, tender look 
in his eyes, as he gazed down on the 
face and listened to the voice that was 
sweetest to him on earth. 

During the first summer of his admin- 
istration the President had a severe ill- 
ness. It lasted six weeks. His oak- 
and-iron constitution at last triumphed 
over it. But it is doubtful whether his 



The First President, ^ 221 

health was not permanently shaken at 
this time. 

The multitude of questions which 
faced him on his recovery was enough 
to perplex the wisest, most far-seeing 
statesman. The young republic, at 
whose head he stood, saw its finances 
impoverished, its frontiers insecure, its 
foreign commerce in a most disastrous 
condition. 

Washington faced the situation with 
the old couraofe of the soldier. He 
formed his Cabinet, he exerted all his 
influence to allay the jealousies of par- 
ties, the dissensions of Congress — for 
the tomahawk, buried for awhile, was at 
its old work amonof the northwestern 
settlements. 

It would require volumes to furnish 
an adequate history of the four years 



22 2 Life of George Washington. 

of Washinor-ton's first administration. 

o 

And while he was in the thick of the 
struofSfle, and p^rowinof old there, the 
harvests were ripening in the pleasant 
Virginia summers about Mount Vernon, 
and he was looking to the close of 
those four years' service with something 
of the eager longing of a prisoner to 
the day of his release. 

But his anticipations were not to be 
realized. His country made her supreme 
voice heard again. She demanded, in 
the name of her new liberties and her 
present perils, the re-election of her 
first President. After a bitter conflict 
with himself, Washington again bowed 
his head to the yoke, and consented to 
retain his office for another four years. 
^ These were crowded for him with 
great and unlooked-for events. The 



The First President, 223 

most tremendous was the French Rev- 
olution. That mighty upheaval of all 
the social, political, and religious tradi- 
tions of centuries not only convulsed 
Europe, but made a powerful vibration 
on our own shores. It was widely 
insisted that the American Revolution 
had paved the way for the French one. 
No one could question that the former 
had had an Immense influence on the 
latter. We were bound to France by 
many grateful memories and associa- 
tions. She had acknowledored the inde- 

o 

pendence of and entered into a treaty 
with the American republic, before it 
had a recognized existence among the 
nations. She had robbed her own scant 
treasury to replenish our empty one. 
Her officers had drawn their swords In 
our cause. Her army and her navy had 



2 24 L^f^ of George Washington. 

joined our forces and compelled the sur- 
render of Lord Cornwallis, on the day 
that established the independence of 
the United States. The young Lafay- 
ette had made himself dear to every 
American. 

The progress of the French Revolu- 
tion had been watched with intense 
solicitude in America. When the Bas- 
tile fell — when the key of that ancient 
prison-fortress had been sent by Lafay- 
ette to Washington — one impulse thrilled 
the heart of the nation. There was a 
passionate sympathy for France in her 
heroic resolve to cast off the yoke that 
had oppressed her for ages. But as 
months rolled on, and fresh tidings 
crossed the sea, of the risings of the 
mob, of the massacres of September, of 
the beheading of the king, of the 



The Ft7^si President. 225 

deadly work of the guillotine, the 
wildest excitement shook America. 
The interest in the affairs of France 
superseded every other. Parties were 
formed. Crowds gathered on the cor- 
ners of the streets and talked the Red 
Republicanism which the fierce mobs of 
St. Antoine were shouting. 

But the popular excitement reached 
its climax when France, after sending 
Louis XVI. to the guillotine, pro- 
claimed war aofainst Eno^land. Amer- 
lea's duty at this crisis became the 
supreme question of the hour. ''Was 
she now," asked the French party, with 
fierce indignation, '' to stand coldly 
aloof and watch the struggle between 
her ancient foe and that France who, 
in the hour of her utmost peril, had so 

generously sprung to her defense ? " 
15 



2 26 J^ifc of (icorge WasJnuQ;ton. 

Gratitude, sympatliy, common principles 
and aims, would, it appeared, force us 
to take the side of France. Swept 
away by the excitement of the time, a 
large party in the nation insisted on 
declarino- war with Enoland. 

At this crisis the great qualities of 
the statesman shone out conspicuous as 
the soldier's had at the head of armies. 
Washington, unmoved by the passions 
of the hour, decided on neutrality. 
Time has absolutely vindicated the wis- 
dom of this decision ; but, at that 
epoch, it greatly shook his popularity. 
Public feeling, in many instances, set 
strongly against him. He, who had 
given such transcendent proofs of his 
patriotism, was accused of a secret de- 
sire to establish a monarchy. With all 
his large-mindedness, he was acutely 



The First President, 227 

sensitive to public opinion. The respon- 
sibilities of that time, with the cruel 
slanders that filled the air, wore heavily 
upon his health and spirits. His splen- 
did self-control occasionally broke down. 
He once solemnly declared that he 
would ''rather be in his grave than 
President of the United States." 

Fresh anxieties and complications fol- 
lowed the arrival of the young Genet, 
the minister whom the French republic 
had sent to the United States. He 
arrived, confident of the sympathy and 
support of America. Received by 
shouting thousands, welcomed with 
feasts and ovations, he was little dis- 
posed to regard the proclamation of 
neutrality. He had landed at Charles- 
ton. In his short sojourn there he 
showed his temper by " issuing commis- 



2 28 J^tf(^ of George Washmgton, 

sions for arming and equipping vessels 
of war, and manning these with Amer- 
ican seamen, to serve against the West 
Indies ! " 

Washington displayed great forbear- 
ance under these provocations. But the 
young, hot-headed minister, used to re- 
cent French methods of dealing with 
authorities, and believing himself sure 
of popular support, was bent on carry- 
ing out his own plans, regardless of all 
proclamations of neutrality. 

The President saw that prompt and 
powerful measures were imperative, if 
he would not see his country plunged 
into a foreiofn war. It was a critical 
moment. Genet retorted passionately 
when Washineton Interfered. France 
naturally resented the neutralit)^ which 
appeared so ungrateful a return of her 



The First President. 229 

past services. England scored up heavy 
grievances against us. 

No doubt the course of Washino-ton 

o 

at this juncture surprised and pained 
many sincere lovers of their country. 
The old revolutionary memories, the 
sense of all we owed to France, burned 
in many hearts through all that agi- 
tated summer of 1 793. It savored to 
them of black ingratitude to turn our 
back on our ancient ally — the young 
republic who had just entered into the 
struggle with her mighty foe. 

Events have justified Washington's 
course, and proved its wise, far-seeing 
statesmanship. But it is not impossible 
that temperament had some influence 
over his convictions at this crisis. With 
all his intense love of liberty, there was 
a side of his nature which was strongly 



230 Life of George Washington, 

conservative, and this side, as well as 
his feelings, must have recoiled at the 
terrible cruelties of the French Revolu- 
tion. 

The death of Louis XVI. and Marie 
Antoinette had been a great shock to 
Washington. During the last years of 
the Revolution, surprisingly familiar and 
pleasant relations had, through the in- 
fluence of Lafayette, existed between the 
young French sovereigns and the Ameri- 
can Commander-in-Chief The king, his 
own treasury bankrupt, had still man- 
aged to transmit finances to our impov- 
erished armies. When the marquis, on 
his return to France, presented himself 
at court, the queen said to him, in her 
gay, joyous manner, ''Give me good 
news of our good Americans, of our 
dear republicans ! " 



The First President, 231 

She was the beautiful, happy Marie 
Antoinette of the Tulleries and of ** Lit- 
tle Trianon " when she said that. One 
seems to see it all — the splendid court, 
the lovely young queen, the stately 
young marquis at his audience, and, 
hovering in the background, the specter 
of the guillotine, the shadow of the 
dungeon of Olmiitz ! 

Dangers thickened about the path of 
the administration. In Pennsylvania the 
discontent at last broke into open riots. 
A military force of fifteen thousand men 
was raised. They entered the western 
counties. Their presence spread wide 
terror among the insurgents. The nas- 
cent rebellion, which, a little later, might 
have become a civil war, was extin- 
guished without bloodshed. 

Differences, personal and political, in 



232 L^fe of George Washington. 

the Cabinet threatened its dissolution, 
and vastly augmented the President's 
anxieties at this period. The Indians 
continued their ravao^es alonpf the west- 
ern frontier. England's behavior inflamed 
the popular feeling. The frequent im- 
pressment of American seamen, the fail- 
ure of the government to give up the 
posts at the south of the lakes, accord- 
ing to treaty, were all deeply resented 
in America. 

Washington faced all these difficulties 
at home and abroad with his tried sa- 
gacity and his large moral courage. 
His influence proved powerful enough 
to keep the Cabinet from dissolution. 
The French Government at last listened 
to America's representations, and con- 
sented to recall its minister. The 
United States, in its turn, dispatched 




3=5? 



Washington's tomb. 



The First President, 233 

James Monroe to France. He was re- 
ceived with open arms by the Assem- 
bly, as he was well known to be in 
sympathy with the republic. 

Affairs had grown comparatively 
smooth before the close of Washington's 
second administration. There was a 
universal desire that he would consent 
to serve another term. This desire had 
its root in the feelinor that the liberties 
of the country were only safe while he 
stood at the helm. Every argument 
and entreaty — the agitation at home, 
the warlike aspect of Europe — were 
brought forward to induce him to re- 
main at his post. But Washington 
was inexorable. The great soul, the 
strong frame, had grown tired at last. 
They needed now the home of his 
youth, the familiar scenes, the rest and 



234 ^^f^ ^f George Washington, 

comfort of tranquil days at Mount 
Vernon. 

All his letters at this period bear pa- 
thetic evidence of this lonofinof: ''The 
remainder of my life," he wrote to his 
old friend and fellow-soldier, Henry 
Knox, ''which, in the course of nature, 
cannot be long, will be occupied in 
rural amusements ; I shall seclude my- 
self as much as possible from the noisy 
and bustling world." He adds an earn- 
est desire to see his friends at Mount 
Vernon, "more than twenty miles from 
which, after I arrive there, it is not 
likely that I shall ever be." 

John Adams was elected second Presi- 
dent of the United States. On the 3d 
of March, 1797, Washington gave a fare- 
well dinner. Many distinguished per- 
sons were present, among whom were 



The First President, 235 

conspicuous the new President and his 
wife. 

There was a great deal of hilarity at 
the feast. But when the cloth was re- 
moved, and Washington said, in his 
quiet, impressive tones, '' Ladies and 
gentlemen, this is the last time I shall 
drink your health as a public man," 
the gayety came to a sudden end. Each 
guest at the board felt the solemn 
meaninof for America of those words. 
The clouds had not vanished from the 
political horizon. There was still much 
in the outlook to fill the heart of every 
lover of his country with doubt and 
foreboding, and the pilot who had 
guided the ship through so many storms 
was about to leave the helm. Amid such 
thoughts the close of the feast could not 
fail to be a sad one. 



236 Life of George Washington. 

On the following day the adminis- 
tration of Georofe Washington came to 
an end. As he left Congress Hall, a 
vast crowd followed him to his home, 
eager for another look at that beloved 
countenance. He turned and waved his 
hat while they cheered ; the calm face 
was radiant at that moment ; the gray 
hairs streamed in the March wind. But 
when he reached his own door there 
was a swift chancre — sadness ofathered 
over his face, tears blinded his eyes, 
and our first President made his fare- 
well to the people, and went back to 
his private life, with a simple gesture. 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE GRAND, SIMPLE LIFE I THE SUN TURN- 
ING WESTWARD. 

As soon as possible, Washington set 
out for Mount Vernon. His wife and 
her granddaughter accompanied him. 
With them, also, rode a young stranger, 
who, though a foreigner, bore the name 
of his host. When the dangers thick- 
ened about his house, George Wash- 
ington Lafayette had been sent by his 
father to his old Commander-in-Chief. 

The A^ustrian dungeon of Olmiitz had, 
through those terrible years, saved La- 
fayette's head from the guillotine. We 
know how Washington's heart had 
grieved for his friend — what vain efforts 



238 Life of George Washington. 

he had made for his release. He felt a 
father's interest in the boy who bore 
his name, and whom so mournful a fate 
had bequeathed to his love and care. 
He could not look at the youth without 
being reminded of the day, long ago, 
when, dining in Philadelphia with his 
officers, he first met the young mar- 
quis, who had left his splendid home 
and crossed the winter seas, to offer his 
services to the cause of American free- 
dom. 

That was the beginning of the long, in- 
timate friendship which existed between 
the American general and the young 
French nobleman. Differences of age, 
of nationality, of temperament, of early 
training, only seemed to augment the 
affection with which the two men re- 
garded each other. Their friendship 



The Graftd, Simple Life. 239 

lights up the long, rugged years of the 
Revolution with many a tender episode. 
Their affection strengthened the souls of 
each in many a bitter hour. The en- 
thusiastic loyalty of his young friend 
was doubly precious to Washington in 
those cruel moments when some of his 
own generals failed him. In his Aus- 
trian dungeon, Lafayette must have 
solaced many hours of his captivity in 
thoughts of Washington, in memories 
of Mount Vernon, where he had been 
such a beloved and honored guest. 

Once more Washington took up the 
old life with greater zest than ever. 
Aofain he miorht be seen on horseback 
in the early mornings, riding about the 
grounds, giving his orders, supervising 
his workmen, inspecting improvements, 
and planning others, while he watched 



• 



240 L^fc of George Waslmigton. 

the Virginia spriijg grow into summer 
over the wide landscape. 

*' I had rather Hve on a farm than be 
the emperor of the world ! " he had 
once exclaimed. *'And yet they are 
chareine nie with wantinor to be a 
king !" 

But it was not altogether paradise at 
Mount Vernon. Thouoh this was re- 
mote from towns and hotels, guests from 
all parts of the world, drawn hither by 
various motives, poured in upon the 
illustrious host, consumed his time, and 
were a heavy strain upon resources 
that had been greatly diminished. 

Washington began to perceive the 
need, at this time, of some person who 
could relieve him from a share of the 
burdens which these constant visitors 
imposed. He had a young nephew, 



The Grand, Simple Life. 241 

who bore the beloved name of Law- 
rence — a favorite with Washington — 
whom he invited to his home, and 
whose services in the role of host 
greatly reHeved his uncle. 

With this nephew and young Lafayette 
and his tutor, and Mrs. Washington's 
pretty granddaughter, who was a great 
favorite with her uncle, and who after- 
ward married the nephew, there must 
have been a great deal of gay young 
life about the ancient rooms and halls. 
Here came, to share this life for awhile, 
in his strange, romantic exile, the Prince 
of Orleans, Louis Philippe, afterward King 
of France. 

Indeed, Mount Vernon was the resort 

of all sorts of distinguished and historic 

persons, during the last years of its 

owner. 

16 



242 Life of George Washington, 

The autumn after Washinofton's return 
home he was gladdened by tidings that 
Lafayette had been released from his 
long captivity, and was on his way to 
Paris. His son, eager to rejoin his fa- 
ther and his family, sailed for home soon 
afterward. 

But it was not Washinofton's fortune 
to long enjoy his hardly earned rest. 
War clouds again loomed threatening 
above the horizon. This time they 
appeared in a new sky. The French 
Government — its temper grown irritable 
and exacting — refused to receive the 
American minister who succeeded Mon- 
roe. Three special envoys had been 
sent by President Adams to France, with 
the hope that a mutual treaty would ad- 
just all disputes between the two gov- 
ernments. The envoys had not found 



The Grand, Simple Life. 243 

it possible to come to any agreement. 
The Directory was confident that the 
ancient relations of France with America 
would prevent a war, and passed meas- 
ures which struck a deadly blow at 
American commerce. 

These high-handed acts were the sig- 
nal for a storm of indignation which 
swept through the land. Ancient ties 
yielded before the sense of present in- 
justice. It seemed for awhile that war 
was inevitable between France and 
America. 

President Adams was empowered to 
raise an army of ten thousand men. 
There was only one name which the 
nation would consent to place at the 
head of that army. 

The Secretary of War carried in per- 
son the commission to Washino^ton which 



244 I^^f^ of George Washington, 

made him " Commander-in-Chief of all 
the armies raised or to be raised." 

So the old dream of a happy, tranquil 
evening of life was rudely broken ! The 
gray-haired soldier heard once more the 
summons that had thrilled his heart in 
his youth, and he prepared to answer 
again the call of his country. 

But his reluctance to do this was so 
great that he only yielded on the con- 
dition that " he should not be called 
into the field until the army required his 
presence there." 

It soon became imperative that he 
should leave Mount Vernon again. 
Weeks followed that must have told 
heavily on his waning vigor. He was 
obliged to superintend the organization 
of the new army, to appoint its officers, 
to attend to infinite details, and to bear, 



The Graiidy Simple Life, 245 

as he could, the old wearisome burden 
of military cares. He did all this, too, 
with his native scrupulous thoroughness. 

The attitude of America now pro- 
duced its effect. It became evident to 
the most arrogant member of the Direc- 
tory that the American people were re- 
solved on sustaining their government. 
France receded from her first position. 
It was gracefully intimated to President 
Adams that his representative should 
be received ''with the respect due a 
free, independent, and powerful nation." 

So the clouds rolled away from the 
horizon, and all America must have 
drawn a breath of relief as they disap- 
peared. 

Washinofton returned once more to 
Mount Vernon. Busy, crowded days 
awaited him there. He had a vast cor- 



246 Life of George Washington, 

respondence on army and other matters. 
Each day he passed hours in his study, 
and other hours in a personal super- 
vision of his estate, and an attempt to 
bring its varied affairs into order. He 
dined out occasionally. He received, as 
always, many guests under his own roof, 
guests that not only included his own 
countrymen, but many distinguished for- 
eigners, who, visiting the republic, were 
naturally curious to behold its most 
illustrious citizen. His fine health, his 
vigorous activity, were sources of con- 
stant cono^ratulation amongf his friends. 

He who had so longf moved at the 
head of armies was still seen, in the 
early mornings, riding with the old mili- 
tary stateliness about Mount Vernon, 
while the thin gray hair shone about 
the fine, calm face. The eighteenth cent- 



The Grand, Simple Life, 247 

ury had entered upon Its last month, 
and George Washington was saying to 
himself that he was drawing near his 
sixty-eighth birthday. 

His own land and the nations afar off 
were praising him. That consciousness 
could not fail to give him pleasure. 
The approval of the wise and good had 
always been precious to him. 

It is pleasant now to feel that last 
year must have been full of restful quiet 
and content for him. He was in the one 
spot on earth that he loved best. He 
was absorbed in those healthful activi- 
ties that were a part of himself The 
commander of armies, the deliverer of a 
nation, the first president of the Ameri- 
can republic, aspired to no loftier name 
than that of farmer. The long, stormy 
years now lay behind him; he might 



248 Life of George Washington. 

reasonably hope that some tranquil ones 
stretched before him. His life had been 
crowned with such success as had never 
fallen to the lot of man. If the liorht 
shone for him in the West, it was such 
a li^ht as he could never have dreamed 
of when it wore the radiant flush of the 
dawn. 

Yet there is a pathetic significance in 
the words which Washington wrote to 
Lafayette, fifteen years before, when the 
two parted "on the way to Annapolis." 

'' I often asked myself, as our carriages 
separated, whether that was to be the 
last sight I should ever have of you? 
And though I wished to say ' no ! ' my 
fears answered ' yes ! ' I called to mind 
the days of my youth, and found they 
had long since fled, to return no more ; 
that I was now descending the hill I 




WASHINGTON S MoNUMKXnT, IN UNION SQUAKE, NHW YORK. 



The Grand, Si7nple Life, 249 

had been fifty-two years climbing ; and 
though I was blessed with a good con- 
stitution, I was of a short-lived family, 
and might soon expect to be entombed 
in the mansion of my fathers." 

This melancholy of a brave soul, able 
to look its fate in the face with calm- 
ness, recurs frequently in the talk and 
correspondence of Washington, during 
the crowded fifteen years which fol- 
lowed that writinof. When he comes to 
speak of himself, a minor key haunts 
the words. There is a certain weariness 
between the lines, as though the writer 
had grown tired with the heat and bur- 
den of the long day. There is no touch 
of despondency or despair — -no false note 
anywhere. That voice always rings 
true to courage and cheer, to faith 
in God and hope for man. But you 



250 Life of George Washington. 

feel that, at times, when he withdrew 
into himself, he looked forward to the 
unbroken slumber with a certain quiet 
loneingr — with an instinct, too, that the 
end could not be, for him, very far off. 
Despite his mothers great age — she 
had died in the first summer of his 
presidency — his own splendid health, 
the Washington breed, as he had said 
to Lafayette, was not a long-lived one. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

TO THE END DECEMBER 1 7, 1799- 

It was on a clear, calm morning, as 
the record of 1799 runs, that Washing- 
ton put the finishing touches to an in- 
strument which had, of late, engrossed 
much of his time. This was a folio of 
thirty pages, containing instructions to 
his steward for the management of 
Mount Vernon in future years. The 
whole folio was executed with all that 
scrupulous neatness and detail with 
which, in his boyhood, he had drawn 
up his codes of manners and morals, or, 
a little later, made out his surveys of 
Lord Fairfax's estate. While he had 



252 L'if^ of George Washington. 

been preparing these instructions for 
his steward, he had appeared to those 
about him in perfect health and vigor. 

The fair morning settled into a 
cloudy afternoon, and the next day- 
brought wind and rain, and at night, 
Washington writes in his diary, '' a 
large circle around the moon." 

The next morning, under the threat- 
ening skies, Washington mounted his 
horse about ten o'clock, and made the 
usual rounds of his estate. A little 
later, the world was to mourn that he 
took that ride in the rough weather. 
Many, too, would remember, with a 
thrill of the ancient superstition, that 
''gray circle about the moon." It must 
have been a long ride, for ''about one 
o'clock " — he tells the story himself — 
**it began to snow; soon after to hail, 



To the End — Dec, ij, 1799. ^h2) 

and then turned to settle into a cold 
rain." 

Washington did not turn back for 
the storm. He wore an overcoat, and 
he who had spent so much of his youth 
in wilderness and camp, would not be 
easily alarmed by the weather. It must 
have been very wild though, for, on 
his return to the house, after three 
o'clock, he thought the storm too 
severe for a servant to go out with 
the mails. The snowflakes hung in his 
gray hair ; but he insisted that his 
great-coat *' had kept him dry, and sat 
down to dinner without changing his 
dress." Those who observed him that 
evening could not perceive any ill- 
effects from the long exposure of the 
day. 

The next morning it continued to 



2 54 Life of George Washington, 

snow, and Washington could not take 
his usual ride. He began to complain 
of a sore throat, but, as it seems to 
have alarmed nobody, he must have 
made light of it. When the weather 
cleared, in the afternoon, he went out 
to mark some trees which he wished 
cut down. It is a curious fact that the 
earliest account of George Washington's 
activity begins with a tree, and ends 
with one. When he returned to the 
house that afternoon he had walked the 
grounds of Mount Vernon for the last 
time. 

As the night came on, the hoarseness, 
which had been apparent all day, in- 
creased. He was very cheerful, how- 
ever, as he sat in the parlor that even- 
ing with his wife and his secretary, and 
found plenty of amusement with the 



To the End — Dec. 17, 1799. 255 

evening mails. To all suggestions that 
he should do something to relieve his 
cold, he answered, with the soldier's 
hardihood, **You know I never take 
anything for a cold ; let it go as it 
came." 

During the night, however, his dis- 
tress became so great as to awaken 
Mrs. Washington, who wished to sum- 
mon a servant ; but he would not per- 
mit this, lest she herself should take 
cold. No one, of course, realized the 
importance of prompt measures at this 
time. No doubt Washington concealed, 
as far as possible, the extent of his suf- 
ferings from his wife. He probably 
still clung to the belief that his illness 
was *' only a cold." 

Day broke at last. The secretary 
was summoned. He found the general 



256 Life of George Washington, 

breathing with difficulty, and barely 
able to articulate. 

By this time the household was 
awake and alarmed. Physicians were 
remote from Mount Vernon. At Wash- 
ington's request, a messenger rode post- 
haste to Alexandria, for the old comrade- 
in-arms and life-long friend. Dr. Craik. 

Meanwhile, they resorted to the old 
methods of the time — bleedings and ex- 
ternal applications. These afforded no 
relief. In two or three hours Dr. Craik 
was at the bedside, with other physi- 
cians. New remedies, with additional 
bleeding, were tried again. 

But all efforts proved in vain. From 
that gray winter's morning it was a 
swift but sure ** descent to death." 
The iron constitution did not yield 
without struggles that prolonged the 



To the End — Dec. ij, 1799. 257 

agony. The light of that brief Decem- 
ber day was fading, when the sick man 
called Mrs. Washington to his bedside. 
In a desk in his room were two wills, 
which he desired her to brinof him. 
When she returned with these he ex- 
amined them, gave her one to retain, 
and asked her to burn the other. " 

With this request George Washington 
seems to have felt that his last work 
was done. The death that had passed 
him by on so many stormy battle-fields, 
had come now, sudden and stealthy, 
into the peace and security of home. 
But the strong heart, that never faltered 
at the summons of duty, that had kept, 
through its long life, the faith and 
purity of a little child, did not falter 
at the last. 

There is a touching simplicity and 
17 



258 Life of George Washington, 

dignity about that death-bed. It seems 
a fitting close to the brave, patient, 
heroic Hfe. Only a very small group 
gathered in the plainly furnished room 
— the broken-hearted wife, the physi- 
cian and old friend, the trusted secre- 
tary, and the faithful servant, watching 
at the foot of the bed. 

The difficulty of breathing made the 
last hours agonizing. From the begin- 
ning, any attenipt to swallow convulsed 
and almost suffocated the sick man. 
His sufferings made speech ^o painful 
that he did not often attempt it. But 
when, a little after sundown. Dr. Craik 
approached the bed, Washington ad- 
dressed him: ''Doctor, I die hard; but 
I am not afraid to go. I believed from 
my first attack that I should not sur- 
vive it. My breath cannot last long." 



To the End — Dec, 17, 1799. 259 

The doctor pressed his hand, unable to 
reply, and retired to the fireside, where 
he sat awhile in speechless grief. 

The strong mind held its integrity to 
the last. The old courage rings always 
through the gathering darkness. But it 
was evident that Washington was tired 
of the struggle, and waiting and long- 
ing for the summons when ** he would 
answer to his name and stand in the 
presence of his Maker." 

Though he uttered no complaint, the 
dreadful restlessness, the continued in- 
quiries about the time, told, better than 
words, to the anxious watchers, the final 
sufferinofs. 

When tlie other physicians, who had 
left the chamber awhile, rejoined Dr. 
Craik, Washington was assisted to sit 
up in bed. '' I feel I am going," he 



26o Life of George Washington. 

said. ''I thank you for your attentions, 
but I pray you to take no more trouble 
about me. Let me go off quietly; I 
cannot last long." 

The doctors continued their efforts to 
relieve the patient. He was bled four 
times. His few remarks show his thor- 
ough conviction that all remedies were 
useless, that the last hour was at hand. 
He said, with a smile, to his secretary, 
that '' he was certainly near his end ; 
that, as it was the debt we must all 
pay, he looked to it with perfect resig- 
nation." 

The long evening wore away. Be- 
tween ten and eleven o'clock Washing- 
ton's breathing grew easier. He with- 
drew his hand from his secretary's and 
felt his own pulse. That act shows 
the habit of the soldier, as well as the 



To the End — Dec. 17, 1799. 261 

clearness of his mind at the last mo- 
ment. The secretary took that dear 
hand and placed it in his bosom. He 
called Dr, Craik. When the latter got 
to the bedside, he saw that a change 
had crept over the features. He placed 
the dying man's hands over his face. 
The stronof life went out at last as an 
infant falls asleep. 

The next morning, when the late 
winter sun came over the horizon, 
George Washington was lying dead in 
the simple chamber at Mount Vernon. 

The disease of which he died — acute 
laryngitis — had not at that time been 
differentiated from other inflammations 
of the throat. His illness had lasted 
less than forty-eight hours. 

Washington's last words were ad- 
dressed to his secretary, " It is well ! " 



262 Life of George Washington, 

Nothing could be more fitting the char- 
acter of the man — the close of his life. 

The blow must have fallen with an 
unspeakable shock upon the country. 
Washington was hardly yet an old man. 
It was not unreasonable to hope that 
long, happy years would find him at 
the fireside of Mount Vernon, or riding 
in summer mornings, a noble, venerable 
figure, among the ancient groves and 
green pastures of Mount Vernon. 

Even now one cannot avoid a regret 
that death did not spare him for awhile, 
to reap the fair harvest of so many 
years of bitter toil and sacrifice ; to find 
himself the central fio^ure in his coun- 
try's heart and imagination, and to see 
the young nation, whose liberties he 
had won, brace her energies for that 
long career of progress and prosperity, 



To the End — Dec, 17, 1799. 263 

whose splendor has so far outstripped 
his largest prophecy of her future. 

Yet there seems something fitting in 
the thougrht that the life of our Wash- 
ington and the life of the century in 
which he had acted his part should 
close together. For the eighteenth cent- 
ury had a lease of only sixteen more 
days to run, when the winter morning 
looked into the quiet chamber where 
the great soldier and statesman lay in 
the majesty of death. 

In that hour of grief, everybody must 
have remembered with thankfulness that 
death had found George Washington 
at last in the one place he would 
have chosen to meet him. 

The limits of this book do not per- 
mit any extended analysis of character. 
This much, however, may be said : 



264 Life of George Washmgton. 

George Washington is never a per- 
plexing study to the historian. His 
nature was one of large, simple, massive 
lines. It forms a singularly consistent, 
harmonious, well-balanced whole. It 
has the largeness, the calmness, the 
majesty, of some ancient statue. 

His mind was of an eminently prac- 
tical order. One does not look to a 
mind of this type for swift and dazzling 
exhibitions of genius. The strong, 
clear, robust quality of Washington's 
intellect, its large wisdom, penetration, 
and staying power, were evinced in 
the most trying emergencies, as well as 
in all the details of life. 

But it was in the moral grandeur of 
his character that the greatness of the 
man will always consist — in his flawless 
integrity, in his large magnanimity, in 



To the End — Dec, 17, 1799. 265 

his unfaltering patience, and in his un- 
swerving patriotism. 

He must have had his faults — his 
limitations. One is inclined to wonder 
sometimes how he bore the ''crucial test 
of the dreary intercourse of every-day 
life." Yet the criticism that detected 
flaws and weaknesses would, perhaps, 
have been only that of the valet, who 
never sees a hero in his master. 

It has, for obvious reasons, been much 
the habit of historians to compare 
George Washington with Napoleon Bo- 
naparte. The reasons for this are obvi- 
ous. There were only a few years' dif- 
ference — as history counts — in the ages 
of the two men. For a short period the 
time of their public careers coincided. 
Each was a central figure in the history 
of a continent. Each won its glorious 



266 Life of George Washington, 

victories, and shaped Its political fort- 
unes. But the essential differences In 
the characters and genius of the two 
men are illustrated by their ambitions. 
That of one was to be the Emperor 
of France — the conqueror of Europe ; 
that of the other was to win the liber- 
ties of his country, and to live and to 
die ''an honest man and a farmer." 

But when we reflect that the "judg- 
ments of time are Inexorably moral," It 
may not, perhaps, appear altogether one 
of the Ironies of fate that the great 
Virginian should end his days at Mount 
Vernon, and that the great Corsican 
should close his life on St. Helena. 

George Washington has left the price- 
less legacy of his memory to America — 
he has left It, indeed, to the world. The 
writer of this sketch can think of no 



To the End — Dec, 17, 1799. 267 

more fitting words to close It than those 
which a late English historian has added 
to his portraiture of our first President : 
'* No nobler figure stands in the fore- 
front of a nation's history." 

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